


















CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 

AN AMERICAN STATESMAN 


BY 

BROOKS ADAMS 


I 

THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS 



BOSTON 

1912 


CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 




AN AMERICAN STATESMAN 


BY 

BROOKS ADAMS 

i* 


I 

THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS 



BOSTON 

1912 



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From the 

Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 
for December, 1911. 


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THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS 

Part I 

I conceive that revolutions, and those who participate in 
them, can never be correctly valued separately from the 
whole movement of the civilization of which they form a 
part. Thus, as I see it, the American Civil War closed the 
era of British supremacy, won during the Napoleonic epoch, 
when privilege made its last stand, and opened the age of 
pure democracy, in which we now live, and whose bourne we 
cannot discern. 

With the peace of 1815 a period began with England 
performing the function of the heart of human civilization 
and, like every other mechanism, this mechanism depended 
on an equilibrium among its parts which presupposed a 
certain distribution of wealth and power, generating a cor¬ 
responding cast of thought. Such an equilibrium was in¬ 
compatible with a united, rich, populous and democratic 
America. By 1861 it had already been impaired, on Lee’s 
surrender at Appomattox it definitely shifted ; but Lee’s 
surrender would not have occurred unless Great Britain had 
been so neutralized during four years that her privileged 
class had not been able to ally their country with the South. 
It follows, therefore, that although the actual battles which 
accompanied this revolution were fought in the western hem¬ 
isphere, the forces which determined victory converged in 
London, and were world wide. 

Fate made my father the instrument to adjust the more 
potent of these forces as they impinged upon the aristocratic 
Government of Great Britain. He acted, in substance, for 
many months as the leader of English democracy, and the 
skill with which he performed a task, supposed to be incom¬ 
patible with the diplomatic position, must be the test of his 
statesmanship. I am rather concerned with his fame as a 
man. I cannot hope to convey any adequate conception of 
the effect my father produced on me, for I look back upon 
him not only as the strongest man I ever knew, but as hav- 


244 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

ing, I suspect, more fully developed than any American of 
the nineteenth century, that intellectual poise and unity of 
the eighteenth, which reached perfection in General Wash¬ 
ington. I shall be content if I can suggest to a younger 
generation a standard by which even vaguely to appreciate 
the delicacy, the compass and the power of his mind. 

As my father was born in 1807 and I in 1848, I have some 
consecutive remembrance of him only as he neared fifty, and 
just before he began his public life. At this point of my child¬ 
hood I recall him best in his study in Boston, where I listened 
to his talk with Charles Sumner and John G. Palfrey about 
slavery; or, what I liked much better, teased him into reading 
^Esop’s Fables to me out of a charming copy bound in blue, 
filled with engravings, in which I delighted. In Quincy he 
seemed to me to correct proof sheets endlessly. They were 
the proofs of the Works of John Adams which he was editing, 
and while he corrected I would sit at his table and pretend to 
study my lessons. I was a trying child, for I was restless and 
inattentive, and I have often wondered how a man as quick¬ 
tempered as my father could have been so patient with me. One 
night, in particular, I can see myself sitting at his table, where 
I was supposed to be busy with my book, but where instead I 
was wondering whether there was really red ink in a large 
glass inkstand in front of me. Stretching across a heap of 
proof sheets, I possessed myself of the inkstand, and then, put¬ 
ting my fingers across the mouth, I deliberately turned it 
upside down, and immediately a deluge of red ink ran through 
my fingers, flowed down the proof sheets, and began to trickle 
into the chair. Though my father, at a scream from my sister, 
who was sitting near me, seized the inkstand, I do not think 
he boxed my ears, or even scolded me much. He was rather 
grieved, apparently, to perceive how utterly he failed in train¬ 
ing me to fix my attention on what I was doing. I really think 
one of the trials of his life was my inattention. He was always 
toiling with me and always failing, until he grew too busy to 
attend to me, when he handed me over to others who, I re¬ 
gret to say, succeeded no better than he. But in spite of my 
inattention he must have been fond of me, for he liked to have 
me with him, and he took me for long walks and told me stories 
of his boyhood; how he had travelled in a carriage alone with 


IQII-] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 245 

his mother across Europe from St. Petersburg to Paris, in the 
winter of 1815, to join his father, who had been at Ghent; how 
he had seen Napoleon at a window in the Tuileries during the 
“hundred days”; and how after he came home he used to 
pass his winter vacations with his grandfather in his house at 
Quincy, when his chief occupation was to read French to John 
Adams and listen to his tales of the Revolution. Those winter 
vacations he always remembered for the cold, since being the 
youngest he sat at dinner farthest from the fire, and envied his 
grandfather, who had his back to it. In short, my father 
adored his children, was very domestic, never left home with¬ 
out his wife if he could help it, and disliked clubs. On that 
subject he was often eloquent to me, and there is a character¬ 
istic entry in his diary touching two of the most exclusive and 
desirable clubs in London. One day in 1862, after he had been 
more than a year in London as minister, he happened to attend 
some function at the Athenaeum to which he had been specially 
invited, and on returning he made this note: l ' 1 Although I was 
admitted a member on my first arrival here, as well as to the 
Travellers, I am so little of a club man that I have never set 
my foot in either before.” 

Ten years later we travelled alone together for some months 
in Europe, when I admit that I found my position difficult; 
but as soon as my mother joined us he became contented and 
sunny. He could not get along without his wife, and he never 
tired of impressing on me the importance of a man’s marriage, 
because, said he, “I should never have amounted to anything 
without your mother. But for her I should have been a recluse.” 

In 1858 the Quincy district sent my father to Congress, and 
when I was eleven he took me with him to Washington. I do 
not know that what I saw there astonished me as a child, for 
it seemed to me as part of the order of the universe that others 
should defer to him, just as we all did at home; but as I look 
back the position he won in a single session seems marvellous. 
He almost immediately gained commanding influence, appar¬ 
ently without an effort, simply by force of character. Mr. 
Seward, especially, who was the prospective Republican candi¬ 
date for the presidency, soon fell into confidential terms. Well do 
I remember Mr. Seward dropping in one wet winter afternoon 
for a chat. He sat down in an arm-chair, thoughtfully pulled 


246 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

off his boots as he talked, and stretched out his feet, clad in 
blue knit stockings, to dry before the fire. My father and Mr. 
Seward had a somewhat similar cast of mind; they were cool 
tacticians, and they agreed in 1860-61 that the most important 
point to gain was time, so that the border States should not 
secede before Lincoln was inaugurated, and thus endanger 
Washington. 1 In support of this policy my father made a con¬ 
ciliatory speech, which Sumner never forgave, 2 and I have 
sometimes fancied that this breach between Sumner and my 
father had much to do with Sumner’s course touching the arbi¬ 
tration of the Alabama Claims, which ended in permitting my 
father to win what I am now inclined to think was the most 
unqualified success of his life. 

Meanwhile Mr. Lincoln had been elected President and had 
asked Seward to be his Secretary of State. Seward wished to 
have my father in the Treasury, but Mr. Lincoln had other 
views, and finally it was arranged between Seward and his 
chief that my father should be sent to England, in spite of 
Sumner’s opinion that he was not fit for the post. And, indeed, 
there was something to be said for Sumner’s doubts, for the 
mission was not only the most important on which any single 
American had probably ever been sent, but my father had 
never been in diplomacy, had never even had a thorough legal 
training, had never written a despatch, and had no experience 
in national public life beyond a single term in the House of 
Representatives. What I wonder at now is Seward’s knowl¬ 
edge of character, and my father’s self-reliance; for though he 
appreciated very imperfectly the full gravity of the situation in 
England, he yet knew enough to oppress any but a very rash 
or a very strong man, and my father was not rash. Many 
years afterward he said of himself, that his mission to England 
seemed to him “like a wild dream from which I awake with a 
feeling of safety.” 

For just a century before the Rebellion broke out, America 
had been rising toward both political and economic independ¬ 
ence of Europe, and after 1850 it began to dawn on the Euro¬ 
pean mind that if the democratic experiment in the West were 
to achieve its apparent destiny, privilege in Europe must end. 

1 Proceedings, xliii. 660. 

2 Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, rv. 9-13. 


I 9 II-] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 247 

John Bright was constantly harping on this theme, and again 
and again passages like this occur in his speeches during our 
Civil War: “When I speak to gentlemen in private upon this 
matter, and hear their own candid opinion — I mean those 
who differ from me on this question — they generally end by 
saying that the Republic is too great and too powerful, and 
that it is better for us — not by ‘ us ’ meaning you [the labor¬ 
ing class], but the governing classes and the governing policy 
of England—that it should be broken up.” Therefore, in 1861, 
the British landed gentry hesitated only in openly siding with 
the South, and dividing the Union, because they were not cer¬ 
tain that the democratic movement at home might not have 
gone too far to make such a course safe. As a boy at school in 
England I saw these feelings in all their crudity. I always 
heard the North vilified or ridiculed, and John Bright de¬ 
nounced as an anarchist and a foe of order. For John Bright 
was the foe of privilege, which to my schoolmates meant order, 
and the representative in Parliament of the great levelling 
propaganda which terrified the aristocracy. The schism which 
split English society was almost as deep and fierce as that 
which rent American, and in March, 1863, just as the great 
struggle began over stopping the iron-clad rams building by 
the Lairds, John Bright and John Laird between them defined 
the issue with something akin to ferocity. On March 26 Bright 
addressed a frantically excited audience of trade-unionists in 
St. James’s Hall, in London, and the next night Laird answered 
him amidst a cheering House of Commons. This was the Laird 
who had already built the Alabama ; who had, on the day that 
Lord Russell issued the order to seize her, sailed down the 
Mersey on her with his daughter as on a party of pleasure in 
order to abet her escape; and who at that moment sat for 
Birkenhead and was notoriously building for the Confederacy 
the two most powerful battle-ships in the world. 

On March 26 Bright opened the vast meeting of working-men 
with these words: 

Privilege thinks it has a great interest in the American contest, 
and every morning, with blatant voice, it comes into your streets and 
curses the American republic. Privilege has beheld an afflicting 
spectacle for many years past. It has beheld thirty millions of 
men, happy and prosperous, without emperor, — without king, — 


248 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

without the surroundings of a court, without nobles, . . . without 
State bishops and State priests, “ sole vendors of the lore which 
works salvation ” — without great armies and great navies, — with¬ 
out great debt and without great taxes, — Privilege has shuddered 
at what might happen to old Europe if this grand experiment should 
succeed. . . . There may be men outside, there are men sitting 
amongst your legislators, who will build and equip corsair ships to 
prey upon the commerce of a friendly power, — who will disregard 
the laws and the honour of their country, . . . and who, for the 
sake of the glittering profit which sometimes waits on crime, are 
content to cover themselves with everlasting infamy. . . . 

I speak not to these men ... I speak to you, the working-men 
of London, the representatives, as you are here tonight, of the 
feelings and the interests of the millions who cannot hear my voice. 
I wish you to be true to yourselves. Dynasties may fall, aristoc¬ 
racies may perish, privilege will vanish into the dim past; but you, 
your children, and your children’s children, will remain, and from 
you the English people will be continued to succeeding generations. 

/You wish the freedom of your country. You wish it for yourselves. 
You strive for it in many ways. Do not then give the hand of fellow¬ 
ship to the worst foes of freedom that the world has ever seen. . . . 
You will not do this. (Cries of Never!) I have faith in you. 

To this, on March 27, Laird replied: 

I will allude to a remark which was made elsewhere last night — 
a remark, I presume, applying to me, or to somebody else, which 
was utterly uncalled for. (Hear!) I have only to say that I would 
rather be handed down to posterity as the builder of a dozen Ala- 
bamas than as the man who applies himself deliberately to set class 
against class (loud cheers), and to cry up the institutions of another 
country, which, when they come to be tested, are of no value what¬ 
ever, and which reduced liberty to an utter absurdity. (Cheers.) 

Whatever I may have felt as a boy at school touching the 
hatred of the English upper class, I can now look back upon 
what occurred during the Civil War with complacency, for not 
only did we win, not only did I afterward see Chief Justice 
Cockburn actually flee from the council room at Geneva when 
the award of the Arbitration was declared, but the malevolence 
of the aristocracy gave my father his opportunity. 

Well do I remember the May evening in 1861 when the 
family arrived in London, and how almost at once the venomous 
atmosphere of the place began to oppress even a boy like me; 


I9II-] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 249 

but my father, as far as I could see, remained composed, though 
the first news he read in his morning paper was the acknowl¬ 
edgment of Confederate belligerency. Then he must have 
realized what was in store for him. He must have known the 
complexion of the British Cabinet; that it was intensely aristo¬ 
cratic, and supposed to be one of the ablest that had sat 
during the century. Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, 
belonged to the influential Temple family, and had held office 
almost continually since 1807, the year of the attack of the 
Leopard on the Chesapeake in Hampton Roads. He had been 
nurtured in the traditions of the press gang, and had matured 
in the era of the arrogance of Waterloo. 

Next to Lord Palmerston ranked Lord John Russell, the Sec¬ 
retary of State for Foreign Affairs, and the minister with whom 
my father had personally to deal. Lord John was the third 
son of the sixth Duke of Bedford, one of the most opulent and 
powerful nobles of England or of the world. Lord John was 
born in 1792, and in 1813, when he was not yet twenty-one, and 
only a few months after the Constitution captured the Guerriere , 
the Duke ordered Lord John’s return to the House of Commons 
from the family borough of Tavistock, very much as he might 
have ordered for him a suit of clothes. It is true that Lord 
John afterward made his political fortune by supporting the 
Reform Bill, which made havoc with such convenient seats as 
Tavistock, but none the less he had the prejudices of his class 
as fully as Lord Palmerston, or as King William himself, who 
so cordially disliked him. Even his father remonstrated with 
him about his supercilious manners and the way in which he 
offended his followers in the House by treating them de haut en 
has. 

Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and de¬ 
cidedly the most restless, as he was possibly the most interest¬ 
ing, member of the Government. Starting, in the first reformed 
Parliament, as an extreme Tory, Gladstone pretty early began 
to suspect that he could obtain what he wanted in life by a 
shorter path than conservatism, and in 1861 he was already 
nearing the parting of the ways. Perhaps the most flexible of 
all eminent English politicians of the nineteenth century ex¬ 
cept Disraeli, Gladstone was neither liked nor trusted by the 
class to which he by birth belonged, least of all by his chief, 


32 


250 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

Lord Palmerston. Indeed Lord Palmerston was far the more 
straightforward and the more reliable man of the two. Of all 
the public men who held office during the Civil War, Gladstone, 
though with radical proclivities, was the most inveterate and 
dangerous foe of the North. When the North prevailed, Glad¬ 
stone, with amazing assurance, turned right about. He had an 
awkward record to explain, but inconsistency never troubled 
Mr. Gladstone. He calmly dismissed the subject by saying 
that when he spoke at Newcastle in 1862, advocating in sub¬ 
stance an alliance between England and the South, he must 
have been demented. He was not demented at Newcastle, he 
was only then what he remained until death, — the most slip¬ 
pery of men. 

Perhaps Gladstone was best described by William E. Forster. 
Forster was too frank to harmonize with Gladstone, and the 
time came when Gladstone dropped him from his Cabinet. 
Afterward when Gordon was besieged in Khartoum, Forster 
tried to make Gladstone relieve him, but Gladstone, finding 
it inconvenient to do so, pretended to believe that there was 
no danger. By this time every one who knew Gladstone rec¬ 
ognized that he could convince himself of anything that served 
his purpose, and one night Mr. Forster, in the heat of debate, 
blurted out the truth. What he said made a great commotion, 
but it was never forgotten. “I believe every one but the Prime 
Minister is already convinced of that danger, . . . and I 
attribute his not being convinced to his wonderful power of 
persuasion. He can persuade most people of most things, and, 
above all, he can persuade himself of almost anything.” 

In May, 1861, Lord Campbell held the Great Seal, but he 
died in June. The Attorney-General, Sir Richard Bethell, 
succeeded him, under the title of Lord Westbury, and few 
people pretended either to like or trust Sir Richard. Four 
years afterward he achieved a distinction which no other 
chancellor had achieved since Lord Macclesfield in 1725. Par¬ 
liament removed him from office for practices so questionable 
that they could not be ignored. 

The rest of the Cabinet were less conspicuous, but they were, 
as a rule, men of good ability, and they reflected pretty fairly 
English Liberal opinion until it shaded into the radicalism of 
John Bright. With one or two exceptions, all of them, prob- 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


251 


I9HJ 

ably, would have liked to dismember the United States. They 
differed chiefly as to the risk they were willing to run. Conse¬ 
quently men like Palmerston, Gladstone, Russell and Bethell 
were much occupied in devising means to succor the South 
safely; only Palmerston and Russell preferred to work above¬ 
board, if they could, while Bethell was a natural secret con¬ 
spirator. All of them were politicians of long experience, of 
proved ability, and, except Bethell, not much more unscrupu¬ 
lous than successful political managers are apt to be. 

Diplomats hated Palmerston, for he was the incarnation of 
arrogance. Nothing, for example, could exceed the brutality 
with which he had trampled on the helpless Greeks in the Don 
Pacifico affair. Still, this did not hurt him with Englishmen who 
understood him and liked him, and also liked his arrogance. He 
had a sure instinct for the drift of English opinion, especially 
among his own class. Lord John was not so popular, and was 
rather more than suspected of slackness in truth-telling, while 
Gladstone was notoriously shifty. Bethell’s reputation was not 
good. All the ministers were, of course, at home, surrounded by 
lawyers and secretaries, and enjoying every facility for obtain¬ 
ing advice and information. The British Foreign Office, in 
particular, boasted of its admirable staff and of its perfect 
equipment. 

Mr. Adams confronted this whole phalanx alone, in a strange 
and hostile land, and at the head of a legation preposterously 
ill-prepared for an emergency. His one advantage was that, 
being himself in his prime, he represented a people who were 
still elastic and nerved to the point of exaltation by the immi¬ 
nence of their danger. The English aristocracy were, on the 
other hand, moribund, and were largely led by men in the 
decline of life. In 1861 Lord Palmerston was seventy-seven 
years old, plainly failing in vigor, so much so that he avoided 
when he could severe parliamentary strains. Thus, though the 
British aristocracy were outwardly as haughty and supercilious 
as ever, they were at heart growing timorous, and were ap¬ 
proaching a period when they would recoil before a resolute 
adversary even when the odds strongly favored them. Lord 
Morley had cause afterward to notice this phenomenon, 
and has commented upon it, in his Life of Gladstone , when 
speaking of the Reform Bill of 1867: “The same timidity that 


252 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


made the ruling classes dread reform, had the compensation 
that very little in the way of popular demonstration was quite 
enough to frighten them into accepting it;” 1 and what was true 
of England in 1867 was beginning to be true of England under 
Palmerston. 

With such antagonists the position of an American minister 
was extremely difficult. A moment’s irresolution or apparent 
timidity would have brought him into contempt, and irrita¬ 
bility or bravado would have made him ridiculous; while 
truckling would have ruined him both abroad and at home. To 
succeed he needed to have at once good manners, absolute 
firmness, and perfect knowledge of the law and the history 
touching the controversies he had to handle, for he had no 
one to help him. Beside all this he must have a profound and 
intuitive insight into English character. He stood between an 
exasperated people in America and an insolent, contemptuous, 
unscrupulous and vindictive aristocracy in England. 

As the summer of 1861 wore on amidst Federal disasters, the 
rancor which had begun to seethe in England against the North 
with the attack on Sumter, changed into a feeling akin to con¬ 
tempt; so that when in November Captain Wilkes took Mason 
and Slidell from the British ship Trent in the West Indies, an 
explosion of mixed anger and disdain followed in England 
which in the twentieth century seems incredible. By the 
American jurist or statesman the act of Wilkes can only be 
considered to have been exceeded in its impropriety by its 
stupidity, for Mason and Slidell, as prisoners, were of no value 
to the Government at Washington; while, ever since the time 
of General Washington, Americans had been protesting against, 
and sometimes fighting to avenge, just such outrages on neutrals 
as he committed. And yet Lord John Russell, the liberal, 
without giving President Lincoln time to disavow the act of 
his officer, wrote a despatch so insulting in tone that it revolted 
the Prince Consort, who insisted on redrafting it. Even 
as it stood when sent, this note demanded peremptorily an 
apology and the surrender of the prisoners within seven days. 
There can be little doubt touching the intent of the men who 
acted thus. When the news of the Trent reached London, Lord 
Palmerston and Lord John Russell fully intended to provoke 
1 Life of Gladstone , 11. 227. 


I 9 II J 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


253 


war, and this was the construction put upon it by John Bright 
and by most friends of the North. To keep the excitement 
hot the newspapers, which were organs of the Government, 
were rampant in invective, troops were hurried to Canada, the 
fleet on the American coast was ordered to prepare for action, 
and Mr. Adams’ notification to the Cabinet, that Wilkes had 
acted without instructions, was suppressed. 

However rashly an American captain may have behaved, or 
however foolishly the American people may have been ex¬ 
pected by an Englishman to act when under strong excitement, 
it was poor policy for a British Minister of Foreign Affairs, who 
wished to pick a quarrel with the United States, to throw away 
every conventional rag of decency as did Lord Russell, when 
the news of the Trent reached London; for by so doing he finally 
raised a formidable resistance at home, and he also brought out 
some of the strongest qualities of his antagonist, the American 
Minister. 

Law is only a formula of words which makes intelligible to 
mankind a movement of energy, and as the energy varies in 
power or direction, so does the law vary. The difficulty with 
which statesmen and judges always contend is that they have 
to guess, at any given moment, whether the law on which they 
rely is still vital, or whether it is dead and will give way beneath 
them. 

When Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell were young, the 
only law which England knew upon the ocean was her own will. 
If she wanted to do a thing, she did it, and her judges would 
declare the act, whatever it might be, to be lawful. If in 1793 
England wished to starve France, by severing her from her col¬ 
onies, the Government ordered the navy to capture all neutral 
ships loaded with French colonial produce bound to France and 
bring them home, where the judges condemned them under the 
“Rule of the War of 1756,” as they called it. It was a phrase 
meaning that England chose to fight that way. If the British 
fleet happened to be short of seamen, the officers used the press 
on American ships as freely as they used it in their own ports. 
If an American captain resisted, they fired into him, as the 
Leopard fired into the Chesapeake during the very year in which 
Lord Palmerston first became a minister of the Crown. No 
American lawyer who had ever thumbed a Blackstone but knew 


254 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec, 

that such outrages as that of Wilkes could be justified by plenty 
of British precedents, and that the worst of these precedents 
had been approved by American lawyers as eminent as Chief 
Justice Parsons of Massachusetts. The English lawyers knew 
these precedents quite as well as the American, and were in¬ 
clined when Lord Palmerston first consulted them to hesitate. 
That was not the way, however, in which ministers of the 
Waterloo generation liked to deal with lawyers. Lord Pal¬ 
merston ordered a satisfactory opinion, much as he might have 
ordered a pair of boots, and he got it in one of the most shame¬ 
less opinions that even English Crown Counsel had ever given 
on maritime law. It would have been well enough, they said, 
if Wilkes, when he took the Trent, had sent her into port for 
condemnation, but he committed a crime against England 
when he removed the men and let the ship go. 

Such considerations as these left Mr. Adams quite unmoved. 
He expected as much. Had not his grandfather tried the case 
of Michael Corbet for killing Lieutenant Panton while re¬ 
sisting a press gang on board the brig Pitt Packet , in old colonial 
days? 1 Had not his father, when on his way to St. Petersburg, 
in 1809, seen an English officer board the ship which carried 
him and his family, muster the hands on deck, and threaten 
to carry away a young sailor whom he knew to be an American? 
Could he not remember the negotiation of the treaty of Ghent, 
when England declined to give up any of her pretensions? 
To him the act of Wilkes, although quite indefensible, seemed 
to be not altogether unfortunate if it were but used wisely by 
the United States to force from England concessions on these 
vital points where she had always been unyielding. So when 
he heard the news suddenly, one day when visiting in the 
country, he remained perfectly composed, and waited for the re¬ 
sult. His attitude had the greatest effect in steadying the friends 
of the North in England, and enabling them to concentrate an 
opposition to extreme measures which in the end prevailed. 

One day when he and my mother were visiting Monckton 
Milnes at Fryston in Yorkshire, as they, with the other guests, 
were starting on some country expedition, he received a tele¬ 
gram with the news. Milnes was one of the few aristocrats 
who sympathized with the North, and he had invited William 
1 See Proceedings, xliv. 422. 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


255 


I9H'J 

E. Forster, who, with Bright and Cobden, supported the United 
States in Parliament, to meet the Minister. On that occasion 
Milnes and Forster saw how my father bore a severe shock, and 
thenceforward their confidence never faltered. Had he wa¬ 
vered their position would have been untenable; how far after¬ 
ward they and their friends were prepared to venture is best 
proved by their actions. In the midst of the turmoil, on De¬ 
cember 5, when the Times and the Post , the organs of the 
Government, were lashing the public to frenzy, a great dinner 
was given to Bright at Rochdale, and there not only was a 
letter read from Cobden recalling the precedents of the Napo¬ 
leonic wars and insisting on forbearance, but Bright made one 
of his boldest speeches challenging the sincerity of the ministry 
and protesting against permitting “your newspapers or your 
public speakers . . . [to] bring you into that frame of mind 
under which your government, if it desires war, may be driven 
to engage in it.” This was the policy which Lord Palmerston 
and Lord Russell were pursuing, but it was one in which they 
could not afford to be exposed. 

Mr. Adams constantly referred in his diary to remarks made 
by Bright and others touching Lord Palmerston’s loss of vigor, 
and I am inclined to think that, after the first explosion of pas¬ 
sion had spent itself, Palmerston concluded that it would be 
better for him not to push the Trent episode to an extremity, 
since he might accomplish the result he desired more easily. At 
this point in the American conflict Englishmen had not learned 
to judge accurately the relative strength of the combatants. 
They underestimated the North. They supposed that the 
only serious menace to the South lay in the blockade, and they 
imagined that the blockade might be as easily raised by a 
Southern fleet built in England and paid for by the South in 
cash, as by an English fleet which they would have to support 
themselves. There were in England abundance of men, like 
the Lairds, eager for this job, and English ministers did not 
as yet realize the difficulties into which they must fall while 
countenancing such frauds on the neutrality laws. When 
Wilkes boarded the Trent in November, 1861, the construction 
of a Southern navy was advancing fast in English dockyards, 
and although Mr. Adams did not collect evidence against the 
Florida specific enough to present until February, 1862, she 


256 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

was then ready for sea. She lay, it is true, a month longer in 
port, waiting for her officers; but as all the Liverpool officials 
were avowedly Southern sympathizers she ran no risk, and 
sailed without hindrance. Lord Russell treated Mr. Adams’ 
complaints with something not very unlike contempt. 1 

As a scheme of war in disguise, the plan was good, but it 
soon proved to be impossible to execute without scandal, be¬ 
cause, as Mr. Adams pointed out, the duty of nations in amity 
was “not to suffer their good faith to be violated . . . merely 
from the insufficiency of their prohibitory policy.” To build a 
Confederate navy in Great Britain presented to the Government 
an alternative; they might either neglect to put their neutrality 
laws in force, or they might have them construed away by the 
courts; but in either case they must perpetrate on the United 
States a fraud too flagrant to be safe with such an American 
minister in London as they began to suspect Mr. Adams to be. 
Hence I infer that Lord Palmerston decided to get rid of him. 
Not that Palmerston necessarily reached this conclusion con¬ 
sciously, for Palmerston, I apprehend, very often aeted by in¬ 
stinct like an animal; but none the less I have no doubt that 
he purposed driving the American Minister out of England, and 
that in the spring of 1862 he was only looking for a pretext to 
pick a quarrel. Those who were best informed and who, on 
the spot, watched events most closely, thought so too. On 
January 25, 1865, Mr. Adams made this entry in his Diary: 
“ Mr. Forster recalled the fact that two or three times during 
my stay, there had been efforts made to fix a quarrel upon 
me, which he intimated had been avoided mainly by my 
care. I applied his remark by recalling the incident of Lord 
Palmerston, as a most amusing one. On the whole Mr. 
Forster has been our firmest and most judicious friend. We 
owe to his tact and talent even more than we do to the more 
showy interference of Messrs. Cobden and Bright.” 

On the nth of June, 1862, he came home late in the 
afternoon and found on his table the following letter from 
Lord Palmerston, marked “Confidential,” which is probably the 
most extraordinary document ever written even by him. It 
was on the subject of General Butler’s proclamation touching 
the women of New Orleans. 

1 Earl Russell to Mr. Adams , March 27, 1862. 


I 9 11 -] 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


257 


Confidential. Brocket, ii June, 1862. 

My dear Sir, — I cannot refrain from taking the liberty of say¬ 
ing to you that it is difficult if not impossible to express adequately 
the disgust which must be excited in the mind of every honorable 
man by the general order of General Butler given in the inclosed ex¬ 
tract from yesterday’s Times. Even when a town is taken by assault 
it is the practice of the Commander of the conquering army to protect 
to his utmost the inhabitants and especially the female part of them, 
and I will venture to say that no example can be found in the history 
of civilized nations till the publication of this order, of a general guilty 
in cold blood of so infamous an act as deliberately to hand over the 
female inhabitants of a conquered city to the unbridled license of an 
unrestrained soldiery. 

If the Federal Government chuses to be served by men capable 
of such revolting outrages, they must submit to abide by the de¬ 
served opinion which mankind will form of their conduct. My dear 
Sir, Yours faithfully, 

Palmerston. 

C. F. Adams Esqr. 

(Address: Private. His Excelcy Chas. F. Adams Esqr. 

Palmerston.) 


The longer Mr. Adams considered this letter, the more he 
suspected that it covered some unfriendly purpose, such as a 
joint intervention with France, of which rumors were abroad; 
but at all events Palmerston meant mischief, and the only way 
to escape him was to silence him. The next day he explained 
to Mr. Seward what he proposed to do. “It strikes me thnX 
he has by his precipitation already put himself in the wrong, 
and I hope to be able to keep him therebut, he added, 
“the responsibility, thus unexpectedly thrown upon me, is 
felt to be of the most serious character.” In after years he 
was rather fond of talking with me of this episode, and I 
received the impression that secretly he felt more satisfaction 
at his success than at almost any incident of his public life, 
for he had no liking for Palmerston. But whether this be so 
or not, he extricated himself from his predicament with won¬ 
derful adroitness. On June 13 he answered, telling Lord 
Palmerston plainly that he doubted whether he ought to re¬ 
ceive such a letter, but before deciding he must know whether 
Lord Palmerston wrote as Prime Minister, or as a private gen¬ 
tleman expressing an individual opinion. Then he went to 

33 


258 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

Earl Russell and asked him what his colleague meant. Russell 
did not know. Meanwhile Lord Palmerston appears to have 
been at a loss. He waited until the 15 th, and then wrote a few 
platitudes, without answering the question. Mr. Adams re¬ 
joined that he was “quite certain” that his government did not 
send him to London “to entertain any discussions of this kind,” 
and that he could not submit “under the seal of privacy” to 
“any indignity which it might be the disposition of the servants 
of any” foreign “sovereign, however exalted,” to offer. There¬ 
fore he wished to ask again whether Lord Palmerston’s first 
note was official, or simply “a private communication of sen¬ 
timent between gentlemen.” Thus driven to bay, Palmer¬ 
ston, on the 19th, admitted, in a long letter of justification, 
that he had spoken as Prime Minister. Then my father 
closed the correspondence in these words: “The difficulties 
in the way of this anomalous form of proceeding seem to me 
to be so grave ... as to make it my painful duty to say to 
your Lordship that I must hereafter, so long as I remain 
here in a public capacity, decline to entertain any similar 
correspondence.” 1 

If in Europe there was one public man more hated and 
feared by diplomats than another, it was Viscount Palmerston. 
When old Baron Brunnow, the Russian Ambassador in London, 
talked about Palmerston, he grew warm. It chanced that on 
the day after Palmerston’s assault on Mr. Adams, which was, 
of course, still a secret, Brunnow met Mr. Adams in the ante¬ 
chamber of the Foreign Office and told him of his own troubles 
before the Crimean War. How Palmerston never spoke the 
truth, which, perhaps, was admissible; but how he would set 
traps for the unwary, in order to increase his popularity in the 
House of Commons by immolating his victims. How fife became 
one long martyrdom, and how retort was futile, because Palmer¬ 
ston had the “hide of a rhinoceros.” Mr. Adams, at least, had 
warning of his danger. 

For once in his life Lord Palmerston felt that his hide had 
been pierced. He had no longer the nerve to face John Bright 
in debate on such an issue, so he dropped the controversy, but 
characteristically he bore no malice. The next year my father 
met him in public and offered his hand. Lord Palmerston took 
1 The letters are printed in Adams, Charles Francis Adams, 248-260. 


IQII.] THE SEIZURE OE THE LAIRD RAMS. 259 

it, and shortly afterward Lady Palmerston asked my mother 
to come again to her receptions. The invitation was accepted. 
There was no scandal, and Mr. Adams remained in London to 
watch the building of the Confederate navy. 

His last letter to Lord Palmerston was dated June 20, 1862; 
his first to Earl Russell touching the Alabama was written on 
June 23. It was the experience of the Florida over again. Mr. 
Dudley, the American consul at Liverpool, sent the Minister 
most explicit affidavits which he enclosed to the Foreign Office. 
The Foreign Office sent them to the Law Officers of the Crown, 
and on their advice transmitted them to the Commissioners of 
Customs at Liverpool, who, in turn, referred “the matter to 
our solicitor, [who] has reported his opinion that, at present, 
there is not sufficient ground to warrant the detention of the 
vessel, or any interference on the part of this department, in 
which report we beg to express our concurrence.” As it was 
notorious that all these Liverpool officials were in substantial 
collusion with the Confederates, the situation seemed desperate; 
but, as a last resource, Mr. Adams took the opinion of Mr. 
Robert Collier, 1 a member of Parliament and one of the most 
effiinent counsel at the bar. Mr. Collier having considered the 
evidence advised the Legation that the Collector of Customs 
at Liverpool would incur “a heavy responsibility’ if he did not 
seize the vessel, and that if the Foreign’Enlistment Act were 
not enforced on that occasion it was but “a dead letter.” He 
added that, if the ship escaped, the Federal Government might 
have “serious grounds of remonstrance.” This advice of Mr. 
Collier did not move Mr. O’Dowd, the Assistant Solicitor of 
Customs at Liverpool; it, however, disturbed Lord Russell, 
who sent it marked “Urgent” to the Law Officers of the Crown. 
Then followed a delay of three days, which has never been well 
accounted for, but which was momentous, not only because it 
was afterward held to fix negligence upon Great Britain, but 
because what occurred in the interval showed, as Semmes 
boasted, that the Lairds at Liverpool were better informed of 
the secret thoughts and actions of the highest officials than were 
those officials informed of one another. 2 The biographer of 

1 Robert Porrett Collier, Lord Monks well (1817-1886). 

2 On December 22, 1865, the following entry occurs in Mr. Adams’ Diary: 
“ Incidentally he [Mr. Moran, Secretary of Legation] told me that he had also 


26 o 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


Lord John Russell has told how, “ almost while Sir Roundell 
Palmer and Sir William Atherton were considering the papers,” 
the Alabama left her dock, 1 so that the adverse decision must 
have been betrayed before it could have been drafted, and how 
the next morning, July 29,1862, she steamed down the Mersey 
on a pretended trial trip, while the opinion was on its way to 
Downing Street. Still the situation was not irretrievable. The 
Alabama might be stopped in a colonial port, and the Duke of 
Argyll advised Lord Russell to seize her. Lord Russell felt 
disposed to follow this advice and submitted an order to the 
Cabinet. The Duke has told what followed: “When you 
brought it before the Cabinet there was a perfect insurrection. 
Everybody but you and I were against the proposed step. 
Bethell was vehement against its ‘ legality ,’ and you gave it up.” 2 

Mr. Adams always inclined to regard Lord John Russell as 
an honest man, and he may have been right; but as much 
could not be said of Bethell, who was Lord John’s evil genius, 
and who finally contrived to put the ministry in a position in 
which it could only defend its integrity by admitting its imbe¬ 
cility. Apparently, until he pondered upon Collier’s opinion, 
Earl Russell never appreciated what his position would be, 
should he have to defend himself against John Bright on the 
charge of having been privy to a conspiracy to build a Confed¬ 
erate navy in Great Britain in fraud of the neutrality laws. 
Gladstone, who was not directly responsible for the conduct 
of foreign affairs, might not shrink from such shame if he 
thought it profitable to himself; but Lord John had a certain 
instinct of honor which, at least in the long run, revolted against 
secret treachery. And in this Lord Russell did not stand alone. 
After experiment with a system of fraudulent neutrality not 
only Lord Russell, but Lord Palmerston and, to do him jus¬ 
tice, Gladstone himself, together with most of the aristoc¬ 
racy, would have preferred an open war, if only an open war 
had not been, as they thought, so dangerous. In their minds 
all turned upon the power of the North, in combination with 

been able to trace the source of the betrayal of the decision of the Government 
which prompted the sudden escape of the Alabama. He showed me what pur¬ 
ported to be a copy of a short note signed by V. Buckley and addressed to Mr. 
[Caleb] Huse, the rebel agent, warning him that what he called his ‘ prot6g£ ’ 
was in danger. This Victor Buckley is a young clerk in the Foreign Office.” 

1 Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, n. 354. 2 lb. n. 355, note. 


I 9 II -1 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


261 


native radicals, to injure them, and they looked longingly for 
the moment when the North should sink low enough to be treated 
as a negligible enemy by men who had no stomach for a do¬ 
mestic broil. The exact order in which events followed each 
other during the next few months is therefore illuminating, 
for it throws into brilliant relief not only the differences in 
temperament among these three famous aristocratic states¬ 
men, Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone, but 
it fixes the stage of decrepitude to which their class had 
fallen. * 

The Alabama sailed from Liverpool on July 29, 1862, just 
after McClellan’s reverses in the Peninsula, and on September 
14 London heard the news of the Second Battle of Bull Run. 
Taking these disasters together, it seemed, in Europe, as prob¬ 
able that the North had been overcome, and Lord Palmerston 
inclined to think that Washington must fall. On this supposi¬ 
tion he wrote to Lord Russell that it might be judicious “to 
recommend an arrangement upon the basis of separation.” 
Lord Russell waited a few days to see what would happen, 
and then replied that “whether the Federal army is destroyed 
or not,” Great Britain should “recognise the Southern States 
as an independent State,” and should arm Canada accordingly. 

In September, 1862, the Northern fortunes fell to their 
lowest point, and, conversely, the aggressive temper of Eng¬ 
land culminated. Lord Palmerston’s view fluctuated with the 
fluctuation of the war, like a barometer. Lord Russell showed 
less sensitiveness. Gladstone blundered. Gladstone so hungered 
to be Prime Minister forthwith that he tried to be conser¬ 
vative and radical at once. On September 17 McClellan won 
the victory of Antietam. Instantly, while Lord Palmerston 
cooled, Lord Russell took to equivocation, and Gladstone 
plunged forward, blatant. It mattered nothing to Gladstone 
what horse he rode provided he could win the stakes, but even 
Gladstone could not ride two horses, galloping in opposite 
directions, at the same time. The northern counties favored 
the radicals and the United States, and just at this time Glad¬ 
stone, who was by way of posing as an advanced liberal and 
friend of the people and of economy, was invited to make a 
sort of triumphal progress through parts of Northumberland, 
Durham and Yorkshire. He was to begin with a great reception 


262 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

at Newcastle on October 7, because, as his biographer has ob¬ 
served, “a sure instinct had revealed an accent in his eloquence 
that spoke of feeling for the common people.” 1 

The “ common people ” had rejoiced so much over the news 
of An tie tarn, then about a week old, that Lord Palmerston had 
made up his mind to wait awhile before committing himself 
further. 2 Not so Mr. Gladstone, who thought he had his oppor¬ 
tunity to score double. After reflecting profoundly on his way 
to Newcastle on what he should say “about Lancashire, and 
America,” he decided that the tide for the South was at flood 
and that he would swim with it. In this mind he made a speech 
in the Newcastle town hall which must always rank as one of 
the most remarkable of his life. He said: “We know quite 
well that the people of the Northern States have not yet drunk 
of the cup, . . . which all the rest of the world see they never¬ 
theless must drink of. We may have our own opinions about 
slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is no 
doubt that Jefferson Davis and the other leaders of the South 
have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and 
they have made what is more than either, they have made a 
nation.” 

Hardly two months had elapsed since Earl Russell had him¬ 
self admitted, by ordering the arrest of the Alabama , that the 
navy of the South was an English navy, built against the most 
sacred obligations which one country can be under toward an¬ 
other. At Newcastle Mr. Gladstone glorified this breach of 
faith, and thus in substance announced himself in favor of an 
alliance with the South. Language by a minister, before a 
declaration of war, could hardly go further. 

The speech made a prodigious sensation, but it was soon seen 
to be a mistake. Gladstone felt it to have been one with grow¬ 
ing acuteness for many a long day. In a kind of public confes¬ 
sion of his sins he afterward admitted that he had committed 
an “offence of incredible grossness.” His excuse was twofold: 
first, that he must have been out of his senses at Newcastle, 
and, second, that Lord Palmerston “desired the severance [of 
the Union] as a diminution of a dangerous power.” This, 
Gladstone protested, was a worse crime than his, only Lord 

1 Morley, Life of Gladstone, n. 77. 

8 Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, 11. 351. 


1911.] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 263 

Palmerston “ prudently held his tongue.’ 51 Prudence was not 
Gladstone’s strongest quality. 

Lord Palmerston disliked Mr. Gladstone and disagreed with 
him on almost every subject, from his views on the suffrage, 
to his eternal preaching of economy and his sympathy with the 
downtrodden tax-payer. The Prime Minister was constantly 
lecturing his obstreperous Chancellor of the Exchequer on his 
errors, and he very willingly, therefore, took so excellent an 
opportunity to give him a lesson which he would remember. 
The next week he sent Sir George Cornewall Lewis to Here¬ 
ford to correct Mr. Gladstone’s notions of international law, 
and to make it clear that the Cabinet, as a whole, had no sym¬ 
pathy with them. Then Mr. Gladstone began to disclaim, and 
he continued explaining and disclaiming until he died. 2 

Meanwhile the proposition which Lord Palmerston had 
made to Lord Russell touching intervention remained to come 
before the Cabinet, and on October 2, in reply to a letter from 
Earl Russell, Lord Palmerston wrote that had the South con¬ 
tinued its successes against the North, mediation might have 
been opportune, but that recently those successes had been 
checked. Therefore it would be wiser to wait. This was just 
before Gladstone’s speech. On October 13 Lord Russell had 
not changed his mind, however much Lord Palmerston may 
have vacillated. On that day he circulated a confidential 
memorandum among the Cabinet rather urging the “duty” of 
“friendly and conciliatory” interposition. On October 23 the 
Cabinet met to consider this memorandum, but that day Lord 
Palmerston’s opinion prevailed, and nothing was done. 

Meanwhile Mr. Adams, thinking that he ought to take some 
notice of Mr. Gladstone’s harangue, and being very anxious 
beside to know what it meant, asked Lord Russell to appoint 
an hour at which he might see him at the Foreign Office. Lord 
Russell named October 23, the very day of the meeting, and it 
is charitable to suppose that he fixed on a time after the meet¬ 
ing had adjourned in order that he might be able to speak 
definitely touching the future. Certainly the Secretary for 
Foreign Affairs distinctly told the American Minister that no 
change in England’s policy of neutrality was contemplated, 


1 Morley, Life of Gladstone , 11. 82. 

* See C. F. Adams, Studies: Military and Diplomatic , 407. 


264 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

either by Mr. Gladstone or by anybody else, for the immediate 
future, and Mr. Adams seems to have thought his manner 
conciliatory. Yet, when he gave this assurance, Lord Russell 
had decided not to drop his project of intervention. By some 
means a hint was conveyed to the French Emperor that an offer 
by him to co-operate in intervention with England might be 
opportune, and Napoleon made such an offer forthwith. This 
gratified Mr. Gladstone, but even with this help he doubted 
whether he could overcome the inertia of his colleagues. He 
had already recognized the failure of his Newcastle speech. 
The event justified his premonitions. The decisive test of 
strength fell on November 12. The day before Gladstone 
wrote home that both “ Lords Palmerston and Russell are 
right,” and yet he still doubted. On November 13 he recorded 
his defeat, and explained how Lord Russell had “ turned tail” 
without “fighting out his battle,” and how Lord Palmerston 
had given Lord Russell’s proposal only “a feeble and half¬ 
hearted support.” 1 Thus Lord Palmerston, who, more than 
any living man, incarnated the spirit of his class, appeared at 
this supreme moment, like Macbeth, letting “‘I dare not’ 
wait upon ‘I would,’ ” while Lord John justified his reputation 
for duplicity, and Gladstone, for the first time, fathomed the 
impotence of his own order. From that day Gladstone had 
done with doubts and threw his lot with the radicals. And 
Gladstone was right; for an aristocracy which recoiled from 
stabbing democracy when democracy lay gasping, was 
moribund. 

Nor did Gladstone stand alone in recognizing that the onset 
of the English aristocracy had collapsed with the repulse of 
Lee at An tie tarn. By a subtle instinct all Europe and America 
became conscious of a change of status. It was the United 
States now which pressed on England, not England on the 
United States. The dates fit with an astonishing precision. 
Hitherto Mr. Adams’ work had been chiefly defensive, as in 
the affair of the Trent. He had indeed made energetic remon¬ 
strances in regard to the escape of both the Florida and the 
Alabama, but in neither case had he gone so far as to put a 
pressure, even verging on coercion, upon England to do her 
duty. He reached that point on the day when Great Britain 
1 Morley, Life of Gladstone, n. 85. 


IQ 11 *] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 265 

admitted to herself that she dared not strike the North after 
a victory. 

On November 12, according to Gladstone, Lord Russell 
“turned tail,” and Lord Palmerston flinched with him. On 
November 20, 1862, Mr. Adams, who knew nothing of what had 
gone on within the Cabinet, wrote to Earl Russell a powerful 
despatch, in which, while disclaiming an intention to imply that 
Her Majesty’s Government countenanced the violation of her 
laws, he pointed out that the Alabama had been built, armed 
and manned by Englishmen; that, though the purpose for 
which she was designed was well known, she had been permitted 
to sail without any of the usual formalities; and that since 
she had not been seized. If this were to go on, he said, peace 
between neighboring countries “would be rendered by it al¬ 
most impracticable.” Therefore he demanded, in the name of 
his Government, redress for past injuries and protection for 
the future. 

Earl Russell reflected upon this letter for a month and then 
replied that, so far as the past was concerned, as he had done 
his best under the law as the law was interpreted by the Coun¬ 
sel for the Crown, he could not admit the right of any foreign 
sovereign to call him to account. Imperfections in a municipal 
statute were not matters open to discussion. Therefore he 
declined to entertain claims for compensation for injuries 
consequent on the escape of the Alabama, but, touching the 
future, he made concessions. He admitted frankly that the 
“Government, after consultation with the Law Officers of 
the Crown, are of opinion that certain amendments might 
be introduced into the Foreign Enlistment Act, which . . . 
would have the effect of giving greater power to the Execu¬ 
tive to prevent the construction, in British ports, of ships 
destined for the use of belligerents.” Before, however, sub¬ 
mitting such amendments to Parliament, Earl Russell pro¬ 
posed that my father should ascertain whether the United 
States wo^ild make similar alterations in their law, so that 
the changes might “proceed pari passu in both countries.” 

Without question when Lord Russell made this proposition 
he was sincere, but when he tried to carry it into effect he found 
himself as impotent as fie had been when he tried to induce 
intervention. His letter to Mr. Adams offering to amend the 

34 


266 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


law was dated December 19, 1862, but on February 14, 1863, 
he wrote to Lord Lyons that the project of amending the For¬ 
eign Enlistment Act had been abandoned, as the Cabinet did 
not see how the “law on this subject could be improved.” To 
the end of his life Lord Russell never seems to have understood 
what ailed the world in his latter days. He protested and prob¬ 
ably believed that he had always intended to do right. In real¬ 
ity he was the victim of a condition of social dissolution which 
brought the lawyers forward, at whose head stood Lord Westbury. 

Very uniformly, when a ruling class is tottering and no longer 
dares to use physical force, it seeks aid from the courts, and in 
1863 the English aristocracy obeyed this general law. Not 
venturing upon an open war with America for fear of trouble 
at home, they resorted to fraud to compass their object, and to 
work a fraud upon their own laws they had to call in the law¬ 
yers. Thus, from the hour when Great Britain definitely aban¬ 
doned the offensive, Mr. Adams found himself pitted against 
Lord Westbury in particular, and the bench and bar of England 
in general. In this field Mr. Adams fared well enough, but 
Lord Russell fared ill, for Earl Russell had no training as a 
lawyer and was always committing indiscretions. He began 
with one of the worst. 

On March 26, 1863, Mr. Adams told Earl Russell that 
“England was at war with the United States, while the United 
States were not at war with England,” and then pressed on him 
this alternative; either the law is “sufficient . . . and then let 
the British Government enforce it; or it is insufficient, and then 
let the British Government apply to Parliament to amend it. ^ 
“I said that the Cabinet were of opinion that the law was 
sufficient. . . . That the British Government had done every¬ 
thing in its power to execute the law; but I admitted that the 
cases of the Alabama and Oreto were a scandal, and in some 
degree a reproach to our laws.” 1 
After this admission the Foreign Office could not refuse to 
test the efficiency of the Foreign Enlistment Act, which the 
Cabinet had declined to amend on the authority of Lord West¬ 
bury, who advised them that it was enough. 2 On March 30, 
1863, four days after this interview, Mr. Adams denounced the 

1 Lord Russell to Lord Lyons, March 27, 1863. 

2 Adams to Seward , February 13, 1863. 


1911J THE seizure of the laird rams. 267 

Alexandra. Lord Russell laid the evidence before the Law 
Officers of the Crown, and on April 4 he received an opinion, 
based on the decision of the Supreme Court of the United 
States in United States v. Quincy, 6 Peters, 448, that the Alex¬ 
andra should be seized under the Foreign Enlistment Act. 
And seized she accordingly was the very next day. The issue 
had now been narrowed to this: Could Mr. Adams goad the 
British Government into protecting the United States either 
with or without the sanction of law; or would the gentry so far 
succeed in paralyzing the law, and in preventing the Govern¬ 
ment from overstepping it, that war would follow from inertia? 
This issue had to be fought out primarily in the courts, and, as 
the crisis approached, no Southern sympathizer, who respected 
his political standing, cared to make himself conspicuous in the 
parliamentary arena. John Bright awed the House of Commons, 
and beyond the precincts of Westminster matters had gone 
ill with those who had interfered. Lord Palmerston had made 
a sally, and in one short day had had enough; Earl Russell, 
with his moral garments in tatters, as he himself admitted by 
describing his administration as a scandal, was trying to cover 
his reputation with the shreds that remained; while Glad¬ 
stone, the greatest orator which the gentry produced during the 
nineteenth century, had so exposed himself at Newcastle that 
his own chief had turned and rent him. All were dumb. A 
situation could hardly have been graver, and at this juncture 
Lord Westbury’s influence predominated. To this several 
causes contributed. Not only was the Chancellor the official 
adviser of his colleagues upon the law, but his range of activity 
was wide. He could intrigue in the Cabinet and in Parliament, 
with the bench and the bar, and in intrigue Lord Westbury had 
few rivals. Whatever Lord Westbury’s motives may have 
been, had he been regularly retained to emasculate the English 
neutrality laws, he could hardly have worked harder or more 
insidiously, while advancing to a predetermined end by a series 
of premeditated steps. He first suppressed the Duke of Ar¬ 
gyll’s proposal to arrest the Alabama in the colonies,.he next 
prevented the amendment of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 
although the Law Officers of the Crown had advised it, 1 and 
1 Earl Russell to Mr. Adams , December 19, 1862. Adams to Seward, February 

13, 1863. 


268 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


lastly he evolved a subtle legal theory with the apparent pur¬ 
pose not only of absolving Great Britain from responsibility for 
any abuse, however flagrant, of her territory by the Confederacy, 
but for preventing her from submitting to arbitration any 
claims for reparation for the injury which the United States 
might endure thereby. According to Lord Westbury the whole 
question hinged not on what men did, but on what they thought. 
This was his celebrated doctrine of animus. British subjects 
might build, equip, arm and man fleets of cruisers, and send 
them to sea to be sold to the South for purposes of war, if it 
could not be proved that in such transactions these English¬ 
men had acted as agents of the South, and not as speculators. 
If they speculated in battleships as merchants, without pre¬ 
existing contracts which made them agents, all was lawful. 
By parity of reasoning, Great Britain had no responsibility 
for her legislation or for her police beyond that of defending the 
good faith of her ministers. 

Great Britain, acting as a neutral, might be mistaken, she 
might be remiss, she might do what she should not have done, 
or she might neglect to do what she should have done, — this 
was immaterial. The only question between the nations was, 
“whether, from beginning to end,” Great Britain “had acted 
with sincerity.” He pressed this doctrine in his speeches in 
Parliament, and he laid it down from the bench. 1 

The inference is almost resistless that Lord Westbury in¬ 
tended not only to legalize the grossest of all frauds by encour¬ 
aging the perversion of evidence, as the Chief Baron of the 
Exchequer afterward pointed out, but also to make the sub¬ 
mission to arbitration of claims arising from such frauds prac¬ 
tically impossible. Bethell was a singularly astute modern man, 
who could hardly have failed to perceive from the beginning 
whither his reasoning led, nor did he shrink from following that 
reasoning to the end. In 1869 Mr. Sumner relied on him as an 
authority for his law when he originated the “indirect claims ”; 
so did Mr. Davis at Geneva. But Lord John Russell was 
another matter. Lord John, whose mind was never one of 
the most lucid, and who was beside a relic of a bygone age, 
saw nothing absurd in declaring categorically, first, that Eng- 

1 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates , Third Series, cxci. 347, 348. Ex parte 
Chavasse, 12 Law Times , New Series, 249. 


IQII-] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 269 

land alone must be the judge of her domestic legislation; of 
then alleging, as an excuse for not arresting pirates fitting 
in English ports, that he had no power to do so under 
English statutes; and finally of refusing compensation for . 
the injury those pirates wrought on a friendly people, be¬ 
cause he could not allow the good faith or the good conduct of 
English ministers, or the competence of English lawyers, to be 
impugned by a foreign nation. Yet, according to Westbury, 
the good faith of Lord Russell and of Sir Roundell Palmer V 
was the only vital matter in issue. 

Surely no one in modern times, save a British aristocrat of 
the Waterloo generation, could have been capable of such 
arrogance. 

It is nothing to the purpose that his arrogance escaped Earl 
Russell, or that he failed to understand how he had come 
into a position where he had to be arrogant to defend him¬ 
self against a criminal accusation. Earl Russell was an old 
man who had been born and bred in an atmosphere in 
which arrogance toward foreigners was as natural as it was 
in 1861 in a Southern planter toward blacks. The fact re¬ 
mains that, but for Bethell, Earl Russell could not have been 
accused of fraud. 

When the Alabama escaped through what even Earl Russell, 
toward the close of his life, admitted to have been his own 
slackness, he would have atoned for his fault by seizing her in 
the colonies, but Bethell stopped him. When Mr. Adams urged 
him to amend a statute under which such outrages as the escape 
of the Alabama could be perpetrated, he assented, and would 
have brought a bill into Parliament to strengthen the Foreign 
Enlistment Act, but Bethell interposed, Lastly, when it came 
to submitting the claims of the United States to arbitration, 
Earl Russell found himself confronted with Lord Westbury’s 
doctrine, that the only matter in issue was his own honesty. 
That was why due diligence and good faith and honesty were 
always confounded in his mind. > 

Such was Lord Westbury, brought forward by the decay of 
the aristocracy to a position of leadership in their contest with 
democracy; nor in all England, perhaps, could a mjlrof equal 
parts have been found less apt to lead with credit.'' Unhappily 
for them, also, the aristocracy were hardly more discreetly 


•4 ^ 


270 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

served by those common law judges on whom they relied to ma¬ 
nipulate the law to meet their necessities. 

Among the survivals of an arrogant age, one of the stiffest in 
the year 1863 was Sir Frederick Pollock, Lord Chief Baron of 
the Exchequer. Although Sir Frederick did not spring from 
noble lineage like Lord John, he was more reactionary, having 
entered Parliament in the Tory interest, and having served as 
Sir Robert Peeks Attorney-General, whereas Lord John had 
been a Whig from birth. Sir Frederick was a year older than 
Lord Palmerston, and was turned of eighty when on June 22, 
1863, he sat with a jury to hear the case of the Alexandra. 
Lord Selborne, who represented the Government in the prosecu¬ 
tion, first as Solicitor, and afterward as Attorney-General, has 
hinted that Pollock’s mind had become impaired, 1 and perhaps 
it is charitable to assume that his memory had failed, for the 
choice lies between this and suspecting that he tried deliber¬ 
ately to falsify the record. Still, it must be conceded that, in 
the contest which ensued between him and Sir Roundell, he 
showed no feebleness but, on the contrary, routed his antag¬ 
onist. Throughout the American war the rock on which the 
British aristocratic party, both political and legal, split, was 
incoherence. As Lord Palmerston’s Cabinet never could unite 
on any aggressive policy, so neither could the lawyers unite on 
any theory touching the law. In this cause Pollock fell foul of 
Bethell, denouncing his doctrine of animus as fraudulent, and 
he did so, apparently, only to save himself from discredit by 
discrediting the Government, when both wished to suppress 
the North. 

I think it probable, from what subsequently occurred, that 
during the litigation Westbury may have explained to Pollock 
his theory of animus. I am inclined to this surmise because of 
Pollock’s familiarity with notions which he would have been 
unlikely to originate, and which he stated in language para¬ 
phrasing that used by Lord Westbury afterward in Ex parte 
Chavasse. 

Be this as it may, Pollock’s conduct at this trial created a 
scandal which at the time almost equalled the scandal of the 
escape of the Alabama , and increased very sensibly that exces¬ 
sive weakness of the Palmerston Government which during 
1 Memorials , Family and Personal , n. 446. 


I 9 II-] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 271 

the winter of 1864 threatened to induce war through simple 
inertia. This was, of course, what Southerners themselves and 
the more extreme of their sympathizers in England wanted, 
but it was a result which could only be attained by a prostitu¬ 
tion of the courts, and a degradation alike of bench and bar. 
Nothing could be plainer than the issue between the two coun¬ 
tries, as Sir Roundell Palmer himself presented it in this very 
cause: 

If there be a war, in which, though the Sovereign of Great Britain 
professes neutrality, yet a great number of the subjects act in a 
manner directly contrary to it, . . . by organizing naval equipments, 
it is perfectly plain that the result will be this: a state of things will 
be produced which alters the balance of power practically, . . . 
something is done which throws a power from the neutral country 
into the scale of one of the belligerents against the other, and which 
makes the belligerent who suffers by it say, I care not what your 
Vattel, or Grotius, or Puffendorf may say; I find that I am practi¬ 
cally suffering from this, ... so that it is better worth my while 
to go to war with you too, and to have it out openly, than allow 
this state of things to go on. 

The Attorney-General then supposed a war between Eng¬ 
land and France, with the United States neutral and fit¬ 
ting out naval expeditions for France, and suggested that 
possibly, the United States being powerful, England might 
hesitate. 

But it might, I think, be quite conceivable and possible that we 
in that case, as we, I think, have done in all similar cases in the 
course of our history, might say: We will not endure it, and if this 
goes on, we will rather go to war with you than let war be carried 
on practically against us from your shores under pretence of neu¬ 
trality. That we should do that with a weak power like Sweden, can 
any human being entertain a doubt? These are the dangers that 
have to be provided against. 

Such bluntness shocked the morals of Sir Frederick, who 
could not tolerate, in his court, that counsel should suggest that 
England had ever done that to a weak power which she would 
not do to a strong. So he scolded Sir Roundell. And yet Sir 
Frederick knew as well as any other man that, for centuries 
before the war of Secession, Great Britain, as a belligerent, had 


272 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. {Dec. 

ruthlessly trampled upon all weak neutrals, sometimes seizing 
their commerce like a common pirate, sometimes firing on their 
frigates and taking from them their cifews, sometimes blockad¬ 
ing their harbors, and sometimes burning their capital cities. 
In short, there was no outrage on the weak which Great Britain 
.had not gloried in perpetrating, and she reached the acme of her 
violence in the wars of the French Revolution and of the First 
Empire, which began soon after the adoption of the Constitu¬ 
tion of the United States in 1789. During those wars the feeble 
republic of the United States suffered much from both France 
and England, and it had devolved upon General Washington 
to hold the balance between the two. As General Washington’s 
Secretary of State, Mr. Jefferson conducted a correspond¬ 
ence on neutrality which ever afterward ranked as a classic, 
and, for a full generation after its foundation, the Supreme 
Court of the United States had been deeply engaged in consid¬ 
ering the law upon this class of questions, so that when Sir 
Frederick came to expound the Foreign Enlistment Act, in the 
trial of the Alexandra , the American authorities were recog¬ 
nized as the standard. Of British authorities on neutrality 
there were few or none. 

It followed that when English judges like Bethell and Pol¬ 
lock, in serving the aristocracy, undertook to emasculate the 
Foreign Enlistment Act, their first anxiety was to explain away 
these American authorities. This they might possibly have 
done without too much ignominy, had they taken care before¬ 
hand to agree upon some theory of construction. Instead of 
doing so they quarrelled, with the result that finally Sir Frederick 
roundly accused those who followed Lord Westbury’s doctrine 
of trying to perpetrate a fraud, while the Law Officers of the 
Crown more than intimated that Sir Frederick had deceived 
them by direct falsehood. 

On these facts there can be no dispute, as they are all matters 
of record; nor can there be any dispute as to the character of 
the measures taken by Lord Westbury to prevent the amend¬ 
ment of the Foreign Enlistment Act. The Lord Chancellor of 
England declared the Foreign Enlistment Act sufficient, at 
the moment when the Chief Baron of the Exchequer stated 
from the bench, that, were the statute construed as Lord West¬ 
bury would construe it, a fleet of ships might be sailed through 


. 1911 .] THE SEIZURE OE THE LAIRD RAMS. 273 

it. And it was by denouncing the Lord Chancellor’s construc¬ 
tion as fraudulent, that the Chief Baron defended the libera¬ 
tion of the Alexandra. That the wrangle was disgraceful 
was shortly admitted by the English Parliament and by the 
English people, as one of the first acts of the Conservatives on 
attaining to power was, in January, 1867, to appoint a com¬ 
mission to so revise the law touching neutrality, that such 
scandals could not occur in future. To make all this clear, 
I must go at large into the Alexandra litigation. 

When the long wars began and Washington issued his proc¬ 
lamation of neutrality, it was universally accepted as an axiom, 
that if, when two nations are at war, a third assists one, by par¬ 
ticipation in hostilities, to the detriment of the other, that third 
nation becomes a party to the conflict, and may be treated as 
an enemy by the country which is aggrieved. The principle 
was plain; the difficulty lay in defining what acts constituted 
a participation in hostilities. With this class of questions 
Washington and Jefferson had endless difficulties; for they soon 
found that neutrals, like other people, must live, and to live 
must trade, and that all trade would be substantially cut off if 
giving aid to one belligerent were to participate in hostilities. 
For example, no aid can be more effective than food and muni¬ 
tions of war. But to neutrals perhaps the most tempting of 
all branches of trade was trade in munitions of war, which the 
belligerents often had to buy regardless of price. This had al¬ 
ways been so, and had been recognized as 1 git'mate within 
certain limits, ever since the Venetians sold material of war to 
the Saracens to use against the Crusaders, although that par¬ 
ticular commercial enterprise the Church had denounced as 
excessive. 

On the other hand, the belligerent, who suffered from these 
sales, claimed the right to seize the so-called contraband of war, 
wherever he could find it in transit, and thus, at last, the United 
States found themselves obliged to draw a line between a com¬ 
mercial venture in material of war, which was not a breach of 
neutrality and therefore innocent, and an armed participation 
in the war by her citizens, which was a crime. For instance, it 
being admitted that American citizens might sell arms and 
gunpowder to a belligerent, and also a ship, provided the ship 
were a merchantman, was it or was it not legitimate for an 

35 


274 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

American to build and arm a ship, and sell it as a speculation 
to a belligerent, knowing that the ship, if sold, would be used to 
cruise against the commerce of a friendly power? Or, putting 
it in other words, was a cruiser sent to a belligerent contraband 
of war , whose sale the Government might countenance, or was 
the escape of such a ship from an American port a breach of 
neutrality? As a rule both the American diplomatic correspond¬ 
ence touching neutrality, and the rulings of the American 
courts, were remarkably sound; but on one occasion Mr. Jus¬ 
tice Story indulged his love of writing legal treatises instead of 
legal opinions, not only to the inconvenience of Mr. Adams, but 
to the mortal peril of the United States. Justice Story provided 
Lord Westbury and Sir Frederick Pollock with their best argu¬ 
ment, and also with the weapon with which they did most of 
their mischief. 

After the peace at Ghent in 1814, a certain American priva¬ 
teer, named the Monmouth , had been dismantled at Baltimore, 
and having been rerigged and partially rearmed was sent by 
her owner, loaded with contraband of war, to Buenos Ayres, to 
be sold, if possible, to the Government of that revolted colony, 
in her war of independence against Spain. The Spaniards, 
afterward, did not deny that the sending of this ship from Bal¬ 
timore to South America was a genuine commercial specula¬ 
tion, made without previous contract or understanding with the 
insurgent Government. In Buenos Ayres the supercargo made 
a bargain, and, having sold the ship to the Government of 
Buenos Ayres, made no objection to the reinlistment of the 
crew, and to her return to Baltimore to add to her armament 
and to obtain more men. Having done this, she sailed again 
from Baltimore as a commissioned ship of war belonging to 
Buenos Ayres, named Independencia, to capture Spanish mer¬ 
chantmen, and among those which she captured was the San - 
tissima Trinidad , which she took into Norfolk. There the 
Spanish Consul began suit for restitution of prize on two 
grounds: first, because the Independencia had originally es¬ 
caped from Baltimore in violation of the neutrality of the 
United States; and, secondly, because, after her return to Bal¬ 
timore and before her capture of the Trinidad , she had unlaw¬ 
fully augmented her armament. The court decreed restitution 
.on the second ground, as being clearly established, and had 


I 9 H-] THE seizure of the laird rams. 275 

Story confined himself to the point in issue, all would have been 
well. But so simple a disposition of an interesting case did not 
content the learned justice. He went into a discussion to show 
that originally the Monmouth had been sent to Buenos Ayres 
not as a cruiser intended to participate in the war, but as a 
commercial venture, — an article to be sold, in a word, like any 
other munition of war: that, in fine, she was contraband of 
war, and that therefore her first departure was innocent, so far 
as any violation of United States statutes was concerned. 

The question as to the original illegal armament and outfit of the 
Independence [that is to say, of the old American privateer, the 
Monmouth ] may be dismissed in a few words. It is apparent that, 
though equipped as a vessel of war, she was sent to Buenos Ayres 
on a commercial adventure, contraband, indeed, but in no shape 
violating our laws or our national neutrality. If captured by a 
Spanish ship-of-war during the voyage, she would have been justly 
condemnable as good prize, for being engaged in a traffic prohibited 
by the law of nations. But there is nothing in our laws, or in the 
law of nations, that forbids our citizens from sending armed vessels, 
as well as munitions of war, to foreign ports for sale. 1 

The British statute of 1819, for the preservation of neutrality, 
was founded on, and was, in substance, the same as the Ameri¬ 
can statute of 1818, so that an interpretation of the one would 
generally fit the other, and the British enactment forbade any 
subject either “to equip, furnish, fit out or arm,” or to procure 
or assist in the equipping or arming, of any vessel “with intent 
to cruise or commit hostilities against any . . . State . . . with 
whom His Majesty shall not then be at war.” Under such a 
statute the first point to determine was whether a ship of war 
could be built by a neutral and sold to a belligerent at all, and 
Justice Story had certainly held in 1822, in the case of the San - 
tissima Trinidad , that the Monmouth , a war-ship equipped, 
armed and even manned at Baltimore, might be sent to Buenos 
Ayres and sold, there being no pre-existing contract touching 
the building or sale; and that the only resource of Spain was 
to capture the Monmouth in transit, if she could. 

Had the Confederates been well advised in 1861, when they 
began building their navy, they would have kept well within 


1 The Santissima Trinidad , 7 Wheaton, 283. 


276 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec; 

this decision, but over-confidence was always their bane, and 
they took little or no pains to disguise their transactions either 
in Liverpool or elsewhere. Therefore the Government had no 
difficulty in proving, what amounted to, Confederate owner¬ 
ship, so much so that such ownership was in substance admitted. 
Consequently, when the Alabama was ready for sea she could 
not sail openly, as the Monmouth had sailed, as contraband of 
war. She had to be smuggled out of England as an unarmed 
ship, and she took her arms afterward from a tender in a foreign 
port. So with the Alexandra , the defence called no witnesses 
to deny that the ship was built under a contract with the Con¬ 
federate Government. They rested on the proposition that she 
was “unarmed ” and “unequipped.” Before a judge of a certain 
kidney, sitting with a Liverpool jury, such a subterfuge might 
answer well enough in the matter of a wooden gunboat which 
might by a stretch of the imagination be used for trade; but it 
was by no means certain that, even with such advantages, it 
would hold water in a process against iron-clad battleships 
provided with steel rams to be used to sink an enemy, inde¬ 
pendent of artillery, like those the Lairds were then complet¬ 
ing in the Mersey. 

Lord Westbury, who was an astute lawyer, proposed to stop 
this bungling by concealing Confederate ownership, and passing 
the ship off either as belonging to some foreign principal other 
than the South, or as the property of an Englishman, who held 
it for sale, upon speculation, to whomever might care to buy, 
consequent on completion and departure. If only the Confed¬ 
erate ownership were disguised, Lord Westbury felt confident 
of his case, because he knew that it would be impossible to prove 
that a secret intent to participate in the war had existed in the 
minds of Englishmen who chose to deny it. This would bring 
the rams within the ruling of Story in the Santissima Trinidad , 
and this he thought would suffice. Lord Westbury’s difficulty 
lay not with the Foreign Enlistment Act, which he had care¬ 
fully prevented Lord Russell from amending because it served 
his purpose so well, but with Sir Frederick Pollock, who was 
not only very dull but very obstinate, and was determined at 
any cost to acquit the Alexandra. 

The Alexandra was not a very powerful or important ship, 
and in contracting for her and building her Captain Bulloch had 


I 9 II-] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 277 

been careless. When he came to build the rams, he used extreme 
caution, covering the ownership most elaborately. Here lay 
the distinction between the two cases. Evidence which would 
serve to liberate the Alexandra would not clear the rams. This 
Lord Westbury must have known, and he would have risked 
the Alexandra to make sure of the rams, while Pollock, who 
was quite impracticable, seems to have cared for nothing but 
the verdict in the case in which he was interested. Hence the 
split between the two judges and the scandal which so affected 
English judicial process that when Lord Russell came to deal 
with the rams, he had to cast aside all regard for law and act 
despotically. 

Had Lord Westbury presided at the trial of the Alexandra , 
there would have been no scandal. He would have managed 
the case differently. Of this there can be no doubt. In April, 
1865, just as the war was closing, in the case of Ex parte 
Chavasse, 1 Lord Westbury went out of his way to explain 
his views. Though not called upon to do so, he then expressed 
the opinion that a British subject might lawfully build, equip, 
arm, and man a ship of war, and might send her from a British 
port to any point he chose beyond British jurisdiction, and 
there sell her to a belligerent whom he knew to be ready and 
waiting to buy her, provided the Government could not prove 
that in these transactions he had acted as an agent and not 
independently. How effective this construction of the law would 
have been, had it been adopted earlier, is proved by the effect 
it had even at that late hour. After her liberation in Liverpool, 
in 1864, the Alexandra was rearrested in the Bahamas, and 
though evidence of armament and the like was clear enough 
against her, she was again liberated by the colonial Vice- 
Admiralty Court for reasons which are better stated in the 
words of the local Attorney-General and of the Governor than 
in mine. The Attorney-General wrote in explanation of his 
failure: “The judge . . . required a description of evidence 
which it was impossible for me to procure, and which, I venture 
to add, will be found alike impracticable in any other case of 
forfeiture under the same statute.” While Governor Rawson 
in transmitting the documents to Mr. Cardwell observed with 
feeling: 


1 12 Law Times , New Series, 249. 


278 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

Moreover, if Lord Westbury’s dictum be accepted, that it needs 
“ proof of an agreement, understanding, or concert with a bellig¬ 
erent Power” to establish a violation of the Foreign Enlistment 
Act, it will be almost impossible to attempt to enforce the law. 
Volunteer cruisers may be equipped and manned in swarms, with 
no power on the part of the Government to detain them in or out of 
British waters, and with a certainty that as soon as they reach the 
belligerent country the necessary agreement will be eagerly made, 
and all the evils would arise which the Act of 1819 was intended to 
prevent. 1 

Because of Lee’s surrender the colonial government did not 
appeal from this judgment, but in due course their despatches 
were received by Earl Russell, who turned them over to Sir 
Roundell Palmer, who was still Attorney-General. Sir Roundell 
found himself in what would have been an embarrassing posi¬ 
tion had the war not ended, as he had taken something very 
like Lord Westbury’s ground in the Alexandra case, for doing 
which Sir Frederick had savagely attacked him. As it was he 
contented himself with observing that though the Attorney- 
General of the Bahamas might have “ exercised a sound discre¬ 
tion ... in declining to appeal,” yet “we desire not to be 
understood as expressing our agreement either with the general 
reasoning of the judgment, or with the construction placed by 
it on the word ‘intent’ in the Foreign Enlistment Act.” 2 
It is also noteworthy that this opinion repudiating Lord West- 
bury and Ex parte Chavasse was written on July 31, 1865, 
and that on July 4 Lord Westbury had resigned his office be¬ 
cause of a vote of censure of the House of Commons. The 
opinion of Judge Doyle in the Vice-Admiralty Court was de¬ 
livered on May 30, 1865, after Appomattox, it is true, but 
still six weeks before Bethell’s disgrace. Whether Sir Roundell 
on July 31, 1865, would have been so clear as to the error in 
Lord Westbury’s judgment, had Lord Westbury still been the 
Lord Chancellor of the administration of which he was At¬ 
torney-General, is a matter for speculation. 

1 Appendix to the Case presented on the part of the Government of Her Britannic 
Majesty (at Geneva), n. 286, 288. 

2 Law Officers of the Crown to Earl Russell, July 31, 1865. Appendix to the 
Case presented on the part of the Government of Her Britannic Majesty (at Geneva), 
n. 303. 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


279 


I9HJ 


Part II. 

On June 22, 1863, on information filed by the Attorney- 
General, the cause of the Alexandra , for violation of the Foreign 
Enlistment Act, came on for trial at Liverpool, before Chief 
Baron Pollock and a special jury. Sir William Atherton, Attor¬ 
ney-General, Sir Roundell Palmer, Solicitor-General, and Sir 
Robert Phillimore, Queen’s Advocate, were the principal coun¬ 
sel for the Crown. Sir Hugh Cairns 1 led for the claimants. 
The Attorney-General opened the case to the jury. 

All these counsel were among the ablest lawyers of England, 
and all were as well acquainted with the American decisions as 
were Lord Westbury or Sir Frederick. The Law Officers of the 
Crown understood perfectly the necessity of distinguishing the 
case of the Alexandra from that of the Santissima Trinidad , 
and they felt confident that, upon the evidence, they could do 
so, since the ownership of the Alexandra by the Confederate 
Government was public and, in substance, undisputed. Sir 
Frederick, on his side, was fully determined that no such dis¬ 
tinction should be made before him, and wrangling between 
the judge and counsel began almost immediately. The weak 
point in the Confederate case was the recklessness with which 
Confederate officers had swaggered about Liverpool talking of 
the ship they were building in Miller & Sons’ yards, and the 
equal recklessness with which Miller & Sons had habitually 
recognized these Confederates as their principals. The facts 
were so notorious that Sir William, in his information, alleged 
with confidence, that the Alexandra had been built and 
“ equipped ” within the United Kingdom in order to be em¬ 
ployed “in the service of certain foreign States, styling them¬ 
selves the Confederate States of America, with intent to cruise 
and commit hostilities,” and so on with the usual verbiage of 
an indictment. He did not assert that she had been “armed.” 
He drew his information expressly to exclude the pretence that 
the Alexandra had been built like the Monmouth , as a mercan- 

1 Hugh McCalmont, first Earl Cairns (1819-1885), one of the most eminent 
English jurists of the nineteenth century. He was elected member for Belfast in 
1852; appointed Solicitor-General by Lord Derby in 1858; Attorney-General in 
1866; and Lord Chancellor by Disraeli in 1868. It was on this occasion that 
Lord Chelmsford protested that he had been dismissed to make way for Cairns 
“with less courtesy than if he had been a butler.” 


28 o 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


tile speculation. He rested on the fact that she had been built 
by the Confederate Government in England, as a war-ship 
designed to “cruise” against the United States, which would be, 
he argued, a clear breach of neutrality. On his side Sir Fred¬ 
erick perceived that if he permitted the Government to ask for 
a verdict on this ground, the case was lost. He therefore inter¬ 
vened very energetically. He undertook to dragoon the Attor¬ 
ney-General into admitting that if a British subject had a 
right to build a war-ship to sell to a belligerent at all, it made no 
difference whether he built the ship as a speculation on his own 
private account, or whether he built her on an order from the 
belligerent who needed her. The dialogue on this point between 
the counsel and the judge is so typical of the temper of the 
time that it is worth extracting verbatim. 

Sir Hugh Cairns had been speaking and had been contend¬ 
ing, on the authority of Story in the Santissima Trinidad, that 
a British subject might lawfully build, fit out, arm and even 
man a war-ship, and sell her to one of two belligerents. To 
this the Attorney-General replied that such a doctrine might 
possibly be relevant if it were supported by evidence, but in this 
case Sir Hugh could not pretend that the Alexandra had been 
built as a speculation, since, though he had the builders and 
owners at hand he had called no witness to contradict the tes¬ 
timony presented by the Government, which tended to show 
that she had been built on order, and under the inspection of 
officers of the Confederate navy. Hence, he insisted, a conclu¬ 
sive presumption arose “that the vessel when completed should 
not be sold, but should at once proceed to be employed in the 
service of . . . the Confederate States.” 1 

Lord Chief Baron. Do you admit that a ship-builder could sell a 
vessel to either of the belligerent parties? 

Mr. Attorney-General. I say that there was no intention to 
sell. . . . 

Lord Chief Baron. I am asking with a view to obtaining some 
information as to what your opinion of the law is. I ask you whether, 
in your opinion, it is lawful for a ship-builder to build ... a vessel 
capable of being turned into a war-like vessel, . . . with a view to 
offer it for sale indifferently to one or other of the belligerent 
parties? . . . 

1 A report of this trial is to be found in the Case of the United States (at 
Geneva), v. 


. 1911 .] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 281 

Mr. Attorney-General. My object in not wishing to bind myself 
to any conclusive answer is this, that, as it appears to me, the facts 
and circumstances of the present case give no rise at all — 

Lord Chief Baron. I am not quite sure of the facts because you 
did not give me an answer; if you give an answer, I should put 
another question, and then you might perhaps see that it was per¬ 
haps very germane to the inquiry. I have no hesitation in saying 
that, according to all the authorities and all the decisions that we can 
get at, a ship-builder has as much right to build a ship and to sell it 
. . . to any belligerent parties, [as] the maker of any sort of cannon 
or muskets* or pistols, or anything else. It is laid down in Kent’s 
Commentaries on American Law that it is the right of neutral sub¬ 
jects to supply both belligerents with arms, gunpowder, and all 
munitions of war; to which I add, why not ships? 

Mr. Attorney-General. I do not controvert the proposition, nor 
do I controvert the doctrine laid down in the two cases of the Inde¬ 
pendence [The Santissima Trinidad] and the ship Alfred, . . . which 
was cited this morning. . . . 

Lord Chief Baron. Apparently, then, you concur in what I state? 

Mr. Attorney-General. I do not deny those authorities, but I 
distinguish them very much indeed from this case. I say that they 
have no bearing on the present case. The present case I put for¬ 
ward, as it was put forward at the outset, as being a case in which 
a particular intent is discovered to have existed, and I prove — 

Lord Chief Baron. The act does not say that it is unlawful to build 
a vessel with that intent. 

Mr. Attorney-General. I shall come to my learned friend’s obser¬ 
vations on these various points in their order. 

The Lord Chief Baron tried to force the Attorney-General 
to admit the soundness of Story’s dictum in the Santissima 
Trinidad , so that he might go on to argue that there could be 
no difference between building on speculation and on order, 
and that if a man might do the one he might equally well do 
the other. If Pollock could obtain this admission from the 
Government, he saw before him all the yards of England open 
to the Confederates. The Attorney-General saw it too, and 
declined to commit himself, although he was shyer of disputing 
the doctrine of the Trinidad than he might have been had he 
felt sure of the Chancellor. What Sir William did was to evade 
a direct answer and pass as fast as he could to Sir Hugh Cairns’ 
second proposition. Sir Hugh contended that, even supposing 
he admitted the Alexandra to have been built expressly for 

36 


282 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

the Confederates, yet to be guilty she “must be a fully armed 
vessel ” when about to leave port. No, replied Sir William, 
that is not so. 

I do not pretend that the vessel was armed. The question was 
whether the ship when seized had been either “equipped,” or “fur¬ 
nished,” or “ fitted out,” or “ armed.” The statute, he maintained, 
indicated an alternative. 

Lord Chief Baron Pollock. Certainly my present impression is 
that they [the words] all mean precisely the same thing. ... To 
equip a ship of war you must furnish it with arms. ... I appre¬ 
hend that all these words mean substantially the same thing, 
whether you call it “equip,” or “furnish,” or “fitting out,” or 
“arming.”. . . 

This was a directer attack on the statute than the other; 
but, as soon as Sir William could silence the Chief Baron long 
enough to complete a sentence, he pointed out to him that 
the crime consisted not only in “equipping,” but in attempting 
to “equip,” and that it would be enough if this “attempt” 
were proved. 

But, [more convincing than this,] if one might, in addressing the 
jury, advert to the consequence of such a construction being adopted 
[as that contended for by the defence and supported by Pollock], 
it would be very easy to show that if it were to be adopted on au¬ 
thority the Foreign Enlistment Act would be a dead letter, and 
might as well be thrown into the fire or repealed. ... We have, as 
a matter of evidence before us in the case, the history of the Alabama , 
... He [Sir Hugh Cairns] says that to constitute a violation of this 
section the vessel must be armed. . . . What would be the conse¬ 
quence of this construction? We do not need to draw on imagina¬ 
tion, because we have the example of the Alabama staring us in the 
face. My learned friend stands on the word “armed.” As long, 
therefore, as you stop short of arming . . . the executive cannot 
interfere. The vessel cannot be seized. . . . Now, then, take the 
case of the Alabama. . . . We know, in point of fact, that she ob¬ 
tained her armament at Terceira, but Terceira is, for the purpose of 
the present observation, merely a place out of the Queen’s domin¬ 
ions. She would have obtained her armament equally well out of 
the Queen’s dominions if there had been a tender lying with that 
armament in the Irish Channel, four miles say from the nearest 
point of the English coast, and of course an equal or greater distance 
from the Irish coast. Now suppose that to have occurred, the British 


igii.] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 283 

Government to be informed on credible and incontestable evidence— 
I have a right to take it so far that the Alabama . . . has been built 
for the express purpose . . . that she shall, as soon as safely she can 
out of reach of British law, take on board her armament, . . . and 
proceed on the operations of a ship of war —... supposing that 
to be done once, . . . and then supposing the same thing to happen 
the next day or the next week, a similar ship, a similar destination, 
a similar preparation, and a tender . . . lying outside ... to fur¬ 
nish and complete the armament; and if you suppose that such in¬ 
stances recurring . . . and the officers of the British Government to 
be distinctly informed of them, . . . and yet no proceeding taken to 
prevent the departure of any one of those vessels from the British 
port — I ask you whether the provisions of this section would not 
be rendered entirely inoperative . . . almost under view of the 
officers and ministers of that law? I then appeal to the language of 
the statute. That is an observation to my Lord. I find that “arm¬ 
ing” is used as an alternative expression. . . . 

Lord Chief Baron Pollock. I have got the word “equip” in Web¬ 
ster’s Dictionary: “Equip, to furnish with arms, or a complete suit 
of arms for military service.” . . . 

Then the Attorney-General cited, in support of his conten¬ 
tion, the case of The United States v. Quincy, 1 in which the 
Supreme Court held that in an indictment for attempting to 
fit put or arm the privateer Bolivar , it was not necessary to 
prove that the ship had been actually armed to justify a ver¬ 
dict of guilty. And so presently the Attorney-General closed 
his address and the presiding judge charged the jury. Over 
this charge, 2 at a subsequent period, a scandalous wrangle took 
place, the Chief Baron repudiating his own words, and counsel 
pressing him with them until he complained that no judge in 
his time had been so treated. And indeed, at the present day, 
such an address as Pollock then made seems incredible, and it 
would now naturally be assumed that there had been errors in 
the report. But there can have been no error, for the language 
which Sir Frederick Pollock denied was reprinted verbatim by 
the British Government for presentation as evidence before 
the Tribunal at Geneva, and those documents were prepared 
after mature deliberation, under the direction of the Lord 

1 6 Peters , 445. 

2 The charge is to be found in Appendix 3 to the Case presented on the part of 
the Government of Her Britannic Majesty (at Geneva), p. 53. 


284 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

Chancellor, Lord Hatherly, and of Sir Roundell Palmer, counsel 
in the Alexandra case, who in the autumn of the year 1872, after 
the award at Geneva, succeeded Lord Hatherly as Lord Chan¬ 
cellor in Gladstone’s Cabinet. 

After some preliminary observations, the Chief Baron quoted 
the words of Justice Story in the Santissima Trinidad , and 
added that, in his opinion, the subjects of a neutral power might 
lawfully supply a belligerent with munitions of war, “what¬ 
ever can be used in war for the destruction of human beings.” 

Well, gentlemen, why should ships be an exception? In my 
opinion, in point of law, they are not. . . . 

Now, gentlemen, I will state to you why I put the question I did 
to the Attorney-General. I said, Do you mean to say that a man 
cannot make a vessel intending to sell it to either of the belligerent 
powers that requires to have it? ... Is that unlawful? The learned 
Attorney-General, I own, rather to my surprise, declined giving an 
answer to a question which I thought very plain and very clear. 
You saw what passed; I must leave you to judge whether there was 
anything improper in the manner in which I (so to express it) com¬ 
muned with the Attorney-General on the law, so that we might 
really understand each other, and that I might have my mind in¬ 
structed, fitted out, equipped, and furnished, if you please, by the 
contents of his. Gentlemen, the learned Attorney-General declined 
to answer that question. But, I think, by this time, . . . you are 
lawyers enough to answer it yourselves. I think that answer ought 
to be, “Yes, a man may make a vessel.” Nay, more, according to 
the authority I have just read, he may make a vessel and arm it, 
and then offer it for sale. So Story lays down. 

But I meant, gentlemen, as I said then, if I had got an affirmative 
answer to that question, to put another. If any man may build a 
vessel for the purpose of offering it to either of the belligerent Powers 
who is minded to have it, may he not execute an order for it? Be¬ 
cause it seems to me to follow, as a matter of course, if I may make a 
vessel and then say to the United States, “I have got a capital vessel, 
it can easily be turned into a ship of war: of course, I have not made 
it a ship of war at present; will you buy it?” If that is perfectly 
lawful, surely it is lawful for the United States to say, “ Make us 
a vessel of such and such description, and when you have made it, 
send it to us.” 

Now, the learned counsel certainly addressed themselves very 
much to this view of the matter. It was said, But, if you allow this, 
you repeal the statute. Gentlemen, .1 think nothing of the kind. 


I 9 II -1 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


285 


What that statute meant to provide for was, I own, I think, by no 
means the protection of the belligerent Powers. . . . Otherwise 
they would have said, You shall not sell gunpowder, you shall not 
sell guns. . . . Why all Birmingham would have been in arms. 
But the object of this statute was this: We will not have our ports 
in this country subject to, possibly, hostile movements; you shall 
not be fitting up at one dock a vessel equipped and ready, not being 
completely armed, but ready to go to sea, and at another dock close 
by be fitting up another vessel, and equipping it in the same way, 
which might come into hostile communication immediately, possi¬ 
bly before they left the port. It would be very wrong if they did so, 
but it is a possibility. Now and then it has happened, and that has 
been the occasion of this statute. . . . 

Now, gentlemen, I present the matter to you in another point of 
view. The offence against which this information is directed, is the 
“ equipping, furnishing, fitting out or arming.” Gentlemen, I have 
looked, so that I might not go wrong ... at Webster’s American 
Dictionary . ... No one can complain that I refer to that. It ap¬ 
pears there that to “equip” is to “furnish with arms.” . . . And I 
own that my opinion is, that “equip,” “furnish,” “fit out,” or 
“arm,” all mean precisely the same thing. I do not mean to say 
that it is absolutely necessary (and, I think, that the learned Attor¬ 
ney-General is right in that), it is not perhaps necessary that the 
vessels should be armed at all points; . . . The question is, whether 
you think that this vessel was fitted. Armed she certainly was not; 
but was there an intention that she should be furnished, fitted, or 
equipped at Liverpool? Because, gentlemen, I must say it seems to 
me that the Alabama sailed away from Liverpool without any arms 
at all, merely a ship in ballast, unfurnished, unequipped, unpre¬ 
pared, and her arms were put in at Terceira, not a port in Her 
Majesty’s dominions. The Foreign Enlistment Act is no more vio¬ 
lated by that than by any other indifferent matter that might happen 
about a boat of any kind whatever. . . . 

Gentlemen, if you think the object was to equip, furnish, fit out, 
or arm that vessel at Liverpool, then that is a sufficient matter. 
But if you think the object really was to build a ship in obedience to 
an order, and in compliance with a contract, leaving it to those who 
bought it to make what use they thought fit of it, then it appears to 
me that the Foreign Enlistment Act has not been in any degree 
broken. . . . 

Attorney-General. Before the jury give their verdict, perhaps your 
Lordship would give us an opportunity of tendering a bill of excep¬ 
tions to a portion of your Lordship’s ruling. 


286 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


Lord Chief Baron. I will accept any bill of exceptions you wish to 
tender. 

Attorney-General . Strictly speaking, it must be done before the 
verdict is given. 

Sir Hugh Cairns. Anything in point of form we will dispense with. 
The convenient way would be to do it afterwards, I suppose, from 
the notes of the Charge. 

Then the jury returned a verdict for the defendant, as they 
had no choice but to do, under such directions, and the Attor¬ 
ney-General began again. 

The Attorney-General. Would your Lordship allow me to hand up 
a very brief note, so that there may be no mistake? ( Handing a paper 
to his Lordship.) 

Sir Hugh Cairns. Perhaps your Lordship will let us have a copy 
of it? 

Lord Chief Baron. It need not be done now. You may wish to 
put it in some other shape. There will be no mistake about it. 

The Attorney-General. I was only anxious that we should quite 
understand what your Lordship has ruled and laid down to the jury. 
That is very shortly stated. . . . 

Lord Chief Baron. No, you have got here that if the vessel was 
not intended to be furnished. 

The Attorney-General. No, my Lord, it is “furnished or fitted 
out.” 

The Solicitor General. Your Lordship said that the words were 
the same. That every one of the words required a warlike armament 
at Liverpool. That is the point. 

Lord Chief Baron. Mr. Attorney-General, I will not bind you to 
what passes on the present occasion. There cannot be any doubt 
now. I cannot alter the thing, and I have no doubt that you have 
a very accurate note of what I have said. 

The Attorney-General. I only wish that we should have your 
Lordship’s concurrence now, while the matter is fresh in your Lord¬ 
ship’s recollection. 

Lord Chief Baron. It cannot be a question of recollection. De¬ 
pend upon it there is an accurate note of what I have said. 

The Attorney-General. Will your Lordship allow me to send in a 
full note from the best materials that we can get? 

Lord Chief Baron. Certainly. 

No one now can ever know whether when Sir Frederick put 
Sir William off he acted in good faith or with premeditated 


I 9 II.] THE seizure of the laird rams. 287 

duplicity. Probably he felt instinctively a wish to leave some 
avenue of escape open should he find himself later on in danger 
of being overruled by his colleagues. But whether this be the# 
true explanation of his conduct or not, he certainly put Earl 
Russell in a position which, without much exaggeration, might 
be called terrific. Earl Russell had been led to expect by his 
counsel that, however Pollock might behave, at least the Gov¬ 
ernment would be able to try to have the worst of his rulings 
corrected by the House of Lords; but he soon learned that no 
appeal was open to him unless the Government’s exceptions to 
the rulings of the presiding judge were signed by that judge, 
and that Pollock would sign nothing. Thus on the one hand 
Earl Russell could obtain no relief from the higher courts be¬ 
cause of Pollock’s bad faith, and on the other he could not amend 
the statute because of BethelTs obduracy. He saw himself 
drifting into a condition of impotence, when it would be impos¬ 
sible for him to prevent Confederate battleships from issuing 
from every dock in England. 

Yet severe as was the stress under which as rigid a man as 
Lord John Russell finally bent, it was as naught beside the 
strain which Mr. Adams endured. He alone had forced the 
British Government to seize the Alexandra and pursue her in 
the courts; he was even then preparing to try to force them to 
seize the Laird raftis. He had been sent to England as a diplo¬ 
mat and not as a lawyer. Suddenly he became involved in a 
ferocious combat with a series of the most exalted magistrates 
upon the English bench, beside whom politicians like Palmer¬ 
ston and Russell were as lambs. And this conflict lasted until 
he closed his public life with the rout of Lord Chief Justice, Sir 
Alexander Cockburn, at Geneva. 

When the jury trial ended with a defeat for the United 
States and for the Crown, the cause went over for six months 
before it could be concluded, to allow time for counsel to draw 
their exceptions to the rulings of the presiding judge, and to 
await the sitting of the full court to hear argument on these 
questions of law. Meanwhile the Confederate agents, elated by 
their legal success, undertook to obtain recognition from Parlia¬ 
ment. Here they were ignominiously beaten, and then, by com¬ 
mon consent, all men drew aside while the American Minister 
closed with Lord John Russell in what was one of the fiercest 


288 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


diplomatic struggles of the century. The United States had 
determined, law or no law, to force Great Britain to seize the 
Laird rams. 

As we look back upon the year 1863 we wonder that at that 
supreme moment the Confederates should have committed 
their cause in the House of Commons to such a champion as 
John Arthur Roebuck. Roebuck had never carried much 
weight in English public life, and he was then old, eccentric 
and half-crazed with vanity. He actually believed that John 
Bright feared him in debate. Preparatory to making his motion 
for the recognition of the Confederacy on June 30, 1863, Roe¬ 
buck had visited Paris, had obtained an interview with the 
French Emperor, and had conversed with him touching the 
foreign policy of England and France. Precisely what passed 
at that interview is uncertain, but, whatever it may have been, 
the Emperor did not intend to have the conversation published, 
and subsequently repudiated Roebuck. Roebuck not only 
made a violent and foolish speech in the House, but he under¬ 
took to tell Parliament the views of the French Emperor as 
though he were a species of special envoy. The result was that 
Palmerston snubbed him, John Bright rent him limb from 
limb, and Roebuck slunk away, without even daring in that 
friendly assembly to ask for a division on his motion. 

Four days after this debate Vicksburg surrendered, Gettys¬ 
burg was won, and Laird launched the first of his two iron-clad 
rams. On these rams now hung the fate of the Confederacy 
and of the English party which supported the Confederacy. 
It is true that the news of the Northern victories did not reach 
London until the middle of the month, but for a considerable 
time the conviction had been growing upon Englishmen that, 
however brilliantly the South might fight on land, she must 
ultimately succumb to exhaustion were the blockade to be 
maintained. They knew also that the South could not raise 
the blockade unassisted, and that the only assistance possible 
was English. England might once have intervened with arms, 
but intervention which had failed in November, 1862, had been 
publicly discredited by Roebuck’s grotesque incompetence. 
A single chance remained. Ships might sail from England 
powerful enough to destroy the fleet of the United States and 
to devastate the Northern coast. Then war would be inevi- 


ign.] the seizure of the laird rams. 289 

table, and with war with England the American Union must 
perish. 

On July 11, during the interval between the Roebuck debate 
and the arrival in London of the news of Vicksburg, Mr. Adams 
began his attack on the Foreign Office. He had from the very 
outset to make it clear that he was leading up to an ultimatum, 
for he knew well that nothing less than the presentation of 
an ultimatum, however he might disguise it in phrases, would 
stimulate Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston to beard the vast 
conspiracy by which they were opposed. He began by ex¬ 
pressing the regret he felt at having to recur to those “acts of 
hostility” at Liverpool which had been the subject of his re¬ 
monstrances ever since his arrival. “In many preceding com¬ 
munications I have endeavored to set forth the facts which 
appear to me to prove, beyond the possibility of a doubt, the 
establishment on the part of the insurgents in the United 
States of a systematic plan of warfare upon the people of the 
United States, carried on from the port of Liverpool, as well as 
in less degree from other ports of this kingdom.” Strong as his 
language had to be, however, he was first very careful to ex¬ 
plain that he did not intend to imply “the smallest disposition 
on the part of Her Majesty’s Government in any way to sanc¬ 
tion, or even to tolerate, the proceedings complained of.” But 
after making this concession to politeness, he stated explicitly 
that the excuse of lack of legal power would not be accepted 
by the United States as justification for a dereliction of duty. 1 

Fruitless as have been the greater part of the remonstrances which 
I have had the honor to make, I am well aware that the causes as¬ 
signed for it do not relate to the want of will, so much as to the absence 
of power in the existing laws to reach a remedy. But, admitting 
this to be the case, if an injury be inflicted upon an innocent friendly 
nation, it surely cannot be a satisfactory reply to its complaints to 
say that the Government, having the will, is not also clothed with 
the necessary powers to make reparation for the past and effect 
prevention for the future. . . . 

I now have the honor to solicit your attention to the evidence of 
the last and gravest act of international hostility yet committed. 
It is the construction and equipment of a steam-vessel of war, of the 
most formidable kind now known, in the port of Liverpool. All the 


1 Mr. Adams to Earl Russell , July n, 1863. 


290 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

appliances of British skill to the arts of destruction appear to have 
been resorted to for the purpose of doing injury to the people of the 
United States. The very construction of such a vessel in a country 
itself in a state of profound peace, without any explanation of the 
objects to which it is to be applied, is calculated to excite uneasiness 
on the part of those involved in a contest where only it could be ex¬ 
pected to be made of use. But when it further appears that it is 
constructed by parties who have been already proved to have fur¬ 
nished one vessel of war to the insurgents in America, and who are 
now shown to be acting in co-operation with their well-known agents, 
... it is not unnatural that such proceedings should be regarded by 
the Government and people of the United States, ... as virtually 
tantamount to a participation in the war by the people of Great 
Britain. 

He enclosed a number of affidavits. The affidavits showed 
that the rams had been begun before the Alabama sailed on 
July 29, 1862, and that plans and specifications for them had 
been prepared much earlier. These plans and specifications a 
witness had seen and read at the office of Fraser, Trenholm & 
Co., of Liverpool, a branch of .a Charleston firm called John 
Fraser & Co., whose head, George A. Trenholm, was the 
Secretary of the Confederate Treasury. Fraser, Trenholm & 
Co. managed the English portion of the Confederate finances. 
They paid the seamen on Confederate war-ships, they nego¬ 
tiated Confederate loans, they conducted blockade running, 
handled Confederate cotton, and their office was the bureau at 
which Captain Bulloch of the Confederate navy, who built 
the Alabama , might be seen almost daily, and where he con¬ 
versed freely touching his plan of campaign. In April, 1863, 
George Temple Chapman, of New York, had met Bulloch at 
this office. Bulloch boasted to Chapman that he had already 
fitted out the Florida and the Alabama , and “that he was 
fitting out more, but that he managed matters so that he 
could defy any one to prove that he was fitting them out for 
the use of the Confederate Government. ,, The witnesses went 
into details touching the size and power of the ships, the thick¬ 
ness of their armor, the diameter of their turrets, and the length 
of the ram or piercer, which they carried on their bows, calcu¬ 
lated to be submerged about two feet, when the ships were 
loaded. All this and much else to like effect these affidavits 
contained, which Mr. Adams sent to Earl Russell not quite four 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


291 


I9nJ 

months after the famous interview of March 26, during which 
the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had admitted 
to the American Minister that “the cases of the Alabama and 
Oreto were a scandal, and in some degree a reproach to” English 
law. 1 

Commenting on these details some months later, Mr. Seward 
wrote to Mr; Adams that the navy could not resist, and that 
“The new vessels which the Lairds are preparing must, there¬ 
fore, be expected to enter Portland, Boston, New York, or, if 
they prefer, must attempt to break the blockade at Charleston, 
or to ascend the Mississippi to New Orleans.” 2 

On July 13 Earl Russell answered Mr. Adams’ note prom¬ 
ising to do what he legally could, but he soon found that legally 
he could do nothing. He had lost the case of the Alexandra , 
and the quarrel between Pollock and Atherton, which was al¬ 
ready seething, seemed likely to prevent a revision of the rul¬ 
ings which had amounted to a direction to find a verdict against 
the Crown. Nor was Lord Russell so favorably situated in 
regard to the rams as he had been in regard to the Alexandra. 
Bulloch, as he boasted, had learned wisdom. He had caused 
the Lairds to make a fraudulent conveyance to a French firm, 
known as Bravay & Cie., who pretended to act as agents for 
the Viceroy of Egypt, and all had been prepared in advance at 
Liverpool in anticipation of an investigation by the Foreign 
Office. On July 8, 1863, three days before Mr. Adams’ note 
to Earl Russell, the Collector of Customs at Liverpool had ad¬ 
vised the Commissioners of Customs that Mr. Dudley, the 
American consul at Liverpool, had asked him to detain an 
iron-clad built by Messrs. Laird of Birkenhead, but that he 
had satisfied himself, “from the inquiries I have made from the 
builders,” that the rams “were not built for the Confederates, 
but are for Frenchmen who first contracted for them.” In 
a postscript he added that the French consul had called on him 
to say that the ship was French property, and that he would 
furnish the necessary papers when she was ready for sea. Now, 
it happened that in the preceding February, Earl Russell had 
been advised by Mr. Colquhoun, the British Consul-General 
at Cairo, that this same Bravay claimed to be executing a ver- 

1 Earl Russell to Lord Lyons , March 27, 1863. 

2 Seward to Adams , September 5, 1863. 


292 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

bal order in England from the late Viceroy for two steel-clad 
frigates. But Mr. Colquhoun added that he knew that the 
Viceroy, after visiting the docks in England and France, had 
decided against that type of ship. “It is not, therefore, likely 
he should give an order to one in the trade.” 1 

As usual, Earl Russell referred the whole correspondence to 
the Law Officers of the Crown, who were altogether unmoved 
by such indications of fraud. On July 24 Atherton, Palmer 
and Phillimore advised the Foreign Office that “we are clearly of 
opinion that Her Majesty’s Government ought not to detain or 
in any way interfere with the steam-vessels in question.” 2 On 
July 25 Mr. Adams sent to Earl Russell further evidence con¬ 
firming Mr. Colquhoun’s doubts touching Bravay, and this 
information was supplemented by Baron Gross, the Secretary 
of the French Embassy, who denied all interest on the part of 
France. From this time forward Mr. Adams without inter¬ 
mission inundated the Foreign Office with affidavits, copies of 
letters, and details touching the movements of Confederate 
agents, concluding a note written on August 14 in these words: 
“It is difficult for me to give your Lordship an adequate idea 
of the uneasiness and anxiety created in the different ports of 
the United States by the idea that instruments of injury of so 
formidable a character continue to threaten their safety, as 
issuing from the ports of Great Britain, a country with which 
the people of the United States are at peace.” Just seven 
days before this note Mr. Dudley had notified the legation that 
the first ram “is shipping her turrets. She no doubt can be 
got ready for sea in a week’s time.” 

Earl Russell was temhly_perplexed. He telegraphed to Earl 
Cowley at Paris, on August 22, to ask if the rams were intended 
for the French Government. Next day but one Cowley re¬ 
plied: “I beg to report that the iron-clad vessels are not for 
the French Government.” 

On August 28 Mr. Dudley wrote to the Collector at Liver¬ 
pool, requesting that a guard should be put over the ram, as 
he was informed that the Lairds “ meant to run her out to sea 
either to-night or to-morrow night.” 

1 Appendix to the Case presented on the part of the Government of Her Britannic 
Majesty (at Geneva), 11. 315. 

2 The Law Officers of the Crown to Earl Russell , July 24, 1863. 



I 9 II-] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 293 

On August 31 Earl Russell received a telegram from Mr- 
Colquhoun, stating that the Viceroy of Egypt absolutely re¬ 
pudiated all connection with the rams. At Liverpool the true 
ownership was notorious. On September 4 Mr. Dudley wrote 
in something like despair to Mr. Seward: 

If ... we could summon witnesses and compel them to testify, 
the case would not be so hard. As it is, you can only obtain it in one 
of two ways, persuasion and bribery. The first, in a hostile commun¬ 
ity, like Liverpool ... is almost impossible, and the last taints the 
evidence. . . . The newspapers comment upon the matter, and 
there is scarcely a man, woman, or child in the place but what knows 
these rams are intended for the Confederates. Among the business 
men on ’Change it is the leading topic of conversation. No one pre¬ 
tends to deny, but all admit and know, that they are for this service. 1 

What Mr. Dudley wrote on September 4 was not only com¬ 
mon knowledge then, but had been trumpeted throughout 
England and America for many weeks. Earl Russell knew the 
facts as well as Mr. Dudley, so did Lord Palmerston, so did 
the Crown Counsel; but the Crown Counsel had had enough at 
the Alexandra trial. No power on earth could wring an opinion 
from them that the Foreign Enlistment Act sufficed to meet 
the emergency. On August 20 they wrote to Earl Russell 
with solemnity: “We cannot advise Her Majesty’s Govern¬ 
ment to interfere in any way with these vessels. There is, in 
fact, no evidence capable of being presented to a Court of 
Justice of any intention on the part of any persons in this coun¬ 
try, that either of these vessels should be employed in the 
belligerent service of the Confederate Government against the 
United States; even if it would have been proper ... to act 
upon the assumption that the law recently laid down by the 
Lord Chief Baron in the case of the Alexandra is incorrect.” 

Earl Russell saw himself fairly trapped. The result had now 
come to be a problem in dynamics. The Minister of the United 
States had to develop energy enough to drive the British Gov¬ 
ernment forward in spite of every obstacle which wealth, social 
influence and legal cunning could put in their path, or war from 
inertia between England and the United States must super¬ 
vene. On September 1 Earl Russell gave what purported to 
be his irrevocable decision. 

1 Dudley to Seward, September 4, 1863. 


294 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


There is no legal evidence against M. Bravay’s claim, nor any¬ 
thing to affect him with any illegal act or purpose; and the respon¬ 
sible agent of the Customs at Liverpool affirms his belief that these 
vessels have not been built for the Confederates. Under these cir¬ 
cumstances . . . Her Majesty’s Government are advised that they 
cannot interfere in any way with these vessels. ... A Court of 
Justice would never condemn in the absence of evidence, and the 
Government would be justly blamed for acting in defiance of the 
principles of law and justice, long recognized and established in this 
country. 

Earl Russell indeed wrote this note on September i, but, 
apparently, yielding to that weakness which finally brought 
the Palmerston administration almost to the point of loss of 
volition in American affairs, he delayed sending it so long that 
Mr. Adams did not receive it until about half-past four o’clock 
on the afternoon of September 4. During these three days Mr. 
Adams, who suspected that the Crown Counsel were wavering, 
became so uneasy that he decided to make a further effort. 
He therefore took advantage, as he explained to Mr. Seward, 
“of some depositions, of no great additional weight,” to write 
again, on September 3. 

He began by pointing out that since France and Egypt both 
repudiated the Laird rams no reasonable doubt could remain 
that on leaving Liverpool they would be “at once devoted to 
the object of carrying on war against the United States of 
America.” He then added, in words which could bear but one 
interpretation, that though he believed that he had already 
stated the importance which his Government attached to the 
sailing of these ships “with sufficient distinctness,” yet he felt 
it his painful duty to make known that he had in some re¬ 
spects “fallen short in expressing the earnestness with which 
I have been . . . directed to describe the grave nature of the 
situation in which both countries must be placed in the event 
of an act of aggression committed against the Government and 
people of the United States by either of these formidable 
vessels.” 1 

1 Mr. Adams to Earl Russell, September 3, 1863. 

The precise order which this correspondence followed is pf interest, since it 
illuminates the intellectual peculiarities of both Earl Russell and of Sir Roundell 
Palmer. On September 1 Earl Russell wrote to Mr. Adams: “That Her Maj¬ 
esty’s Government are advised that they cannot interfere in any way with these 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


295 


ign.] 

In this last paragraph Mr. Adams referred to Mr. Seward’s 
famous instructions of the nth of the previous July. In 
these instructions Mr. Seward, in considering the position 
taken by Pollock, after pointing out that, were the rulings of 
the Chief Baron in the Alexandra case to be affirmed and acted 
upon by the Cabinet, the President would be obliged to assume 

vessels,” because there was no legal evidence against M. Bravay, and also be¬ 
cause “the responsible agent of the Customs at Liverpool affirms his belief that 
these vessels have not been built for the Confederates.” 

However, it happened this letter was held back and only delivered to Mr. 
Adams at 4.20 p. m. on September 4, as appears from his note to Mr. Seward of 
that date. Meanwhile Mr. Adams wrote his strong note of September 3, which 
was indorsed, at the Foreign Office, as received on the same day. The hour is 
not indicated. On September 3 Mr. Layard, the Under Secretary, wrote to 
the Treasury as follows: 

Foreign Office, September 3, 1863. 

Sir, — lam directed by Earl Russell to request that you will move the Lords 
Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury to give directions to the Customs au¬ 
thorities at Liverpool to stop the iron-clad vessels at Messrs. Laird’s yard at 
Birkenhead, as soon as there is reason to believe that they are actually about 
to put to sea, and to detain them until further orders. I am, &c. 

A. H. Layard. 

Also, on September 3, Earl Russell wrote to Lord Palmerston from Scotland, 
to tell Lord Palmerston that he had ordered the rams to be detained. Between 
September 1 and September 3 nothing had been received at the Foreign Office 
save the affidavits sent by Mr. Adams and another similar one sent by Mr. 
Dudley to the Custom House. 

On September 1 Earl Russell had ordered Mr. Layard to write to the Treasury, 
that “if sufficient evidence can be obtained to lead to the belief that they are 
intended for the Confederate States of America” the vessels ought to be de¬ 
tained. This was the day on which he officially notified Mr. Adams that there 
was no such evidence. It follows that if Earl Russell had not been moved by the 
letter of September 3, then he changed his mind, since the evidence remained the 
same, without cause. This was not the statement made by Sir Roundell, who 
said emphatically in debate that “the Government had grounds for what they 
did.” 

On February 12, 1864, the day after the debate in the Lords, Mr. Adams made 
this comment in his diary: 

“ There was another debate on American affairs in the Lords, in which Lord 
Perby proved more successful in ferreting out the facts than on the first night. 
His compliment to me as having benefited both countries by assuming the grave 
responsibility of suppressing a despatch is a little beyond the reality. At the 
same time he dwells upon the series of events in the early part of September, 
and describes them as a diplomatic triumph, which they truly were. 

“Lord Russell’s reply was not quite ingenuous. He now maintains that his 
answer on the 1st of September was not final. The language of that note will 
speak for itself. To affirm that the change in the evidence within three days was 
such as to make a complete revolution in the tone is scarcely consistent with 
probability. Yet if he can make any use of such a flimsy pretence to protect 
himself from attack, I am content.” 


296 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

that no law existed in Great Britain to protect the United 
States, and that it was proper that Mr. Adams should know 
and “be able to communicate to Her Majesty’s Government” 
what the President’s views would be in that contingency, for¬ 
mulated this ultimatum: 

If the law of Great Britain must be left without amendment, and 
be construed by the Government in conformity with the rulings of 
the Chief Baron, . . . then there will be left for the United States 
no alternative but to protect themselves and their commerce against 
armed cruisers proceeding from British ports as against the naval 
forces of a public enemy. . . . The navy of the United States will 
receive instructions to pursue these enemies into the ports which 
thus, in violation of the law of nations and the obligations of neu¬ 
trality, become harbors for the pirates. 1 

Hitherto there had been no need even to consider the pro¬ 
priety of presenting so drastic a despatch to Earl Russell, but 
if Earl Russell should, after the intimation contained in the 
note of September 3, decline to act, Mr. Adams would have to 
decide whether he would proceed to extremities, or whether he 
would suppress the instructions and use other means. Should 
he decide on the latter course, and the rams escape, he would 
be held responsible for disobedience to orders. 

That day, September 3, 1863, when Earl Russell’s note de¬ 
clining to stop the rams, and Mr. Adams’ note conveying a 
veiled ultimatum touching their sailing, crossed each other, 
marked a crisis in the social development of England and 
America. To Mr. Adams the vacillation of the Cabinet 
seemed astounding weakness. On September 8 he wrote to 
Seward, “The most extraordinary circumstance attending 
this history is the timidity and vacillation in the assumption 
of a necessary responsibility by the officers of the Crown.” 
To us, who look back upon the Civil War through a vista of 
fifty years, “the most extraordinary circumstance” seems to 
be that terrible energy which enabled the United States in the 
extremity of her agony to coerce the nobility and gentry, the 
army, the navy, the church, the bench, the bar, the bankers, 
the ship-builders, the press, in fine, all that was . wealthy, 
haughty, influential and supposed to be intelligent in Great 

1 Seward to Adams, July 11, 1863. 


I 9 H.] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS- 297 

Britain. And it was as the vent of this energy that Mr. Adams, 
after receiving Earl Russell’s letter of September 4, wrote on 
September 5, although despairing of success, his memorable 
declaration of war. Enclosing a paragraph cut from a South¬ 
ern newspaper which contained the familiar threat of burning 
Northern ports with English-built ships, he observed as calmly 
as though he were summing up a mathematical demonstration: 

It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that 
this is war. ... In my belief it is impossible that any nation, re¬ 
taining a proper degree of self-respect, could tamely submit to a 
continuance of relations so utterly deficient in reciprocity. I have no 
idea that Great Britain would do so for a moment. 

Still he did not communicate Seward’s instructions. He 
suppressed them. After profound reflection he decided not to 
cast away the last hope of maintaining peace. He continued, 
instead of enclosing a copy of Mr. Seward’s note: 

After a careful examination of the full instructions with which I 
have been furnished, in preparation for such an emergency, I deem 
it inexpedient for me to attempt any recurrence to arguments for 
effective interposition in the present case. The fatal objection of 
impotency which paralyzes Her Majesty’s -Government seems to 
present an insuperable barrier against all further reasoning. Under 
these circumstances, I prefer to desist from communicating to your 
Lordship even such further portions of my existing instructions as 
are suited to the case, lest I should contribute to aggravate difficul¬ 
ties already far too serious. I therefore content myself with inform¬ 
ing your Lordship that I transmit, by the present steamer, a copy 
of your note for the consideration of my Government, and shall 
await the more specific directions that will be contained in the 
reply. 1 

This letter may well be taken as a perfect specimen of the 
art of applying the maximum diplomatic pressure along the 
path of minimum resistance. And yet, strangely enough, this 
diplomatic gem was not needed. For once Mr. Adams’ instinct 
had failed him. He, possibly through anxiety, credited Lord 
Russell with more tenacity than he had. Mr. Adams already 
had prevailed. England had surrendered to the note of the 
third. 

1 Mr. Adams to Earl Russell , September 5, 1863. 

38 


298 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

Foreign Office, September 4, 1863. 

Sir, — With reference to your letter of yesterday’s date with re¬ 
spect to the iron-clad steam rams from Messrs. Lairds’ yard at Bir¬ 
kenhead, as well as with reference to previous letters from you on 
the same subject, I have to inform you that the matter is under the 
serious and anxious consideration of Her Majesty’s Government. 

I beg you to accept the assurances of the highest consideration 
with which I have the honour to be, Sir, your most obedient servant, 

Russell. 

Charles F. Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c. 

Further than this Earl Russell, for the moment, could not go, 
for he did not know whether the Cabinet would sustain him. 
He had acted on his own responsibility against the advice to the 
Crown Counsel, and he could only appeal to Lord Palmerston 
to stand by him. On September 3, the day on which he received 
the letter which appears to have determined him, he wrote 
confidentially to the Prime Minister: 

My dear Palmerston, — The conduct of the gentlemen who 
have contracted for the two iron-clads at Birkenhead is so very 
suspicious that I have thought it necessary to direct that they 
should be detained. The Solicitor General [Sir Roundell Palmer] 
has been consulted, and concurs in the measure as one of policy 
though not of strict law. ... If you do not approve, pray appoint 
a Cabinet for Tuesday or Wednesday next. 1 

Mr. Adams sent his despatch of September 5 somewhat 
early. Just before three o’clock in the afternoon he received 
the note containing Lord Russell’s capitulation, and he imme¬ 
diately took himself to task for what he condemned as an error 
of judgment. “I need not say,” he told Mr. Seward, “that had 
I known of the later course of the Government in season, I 
should have held it [his declaration of war] back. Feeling as I 
do the heavy responsibility that must devolve upon me in the 
conduct of this critical transaction, it is not my disposition to 
say or do the least thing that may add to the difficulties . . . 
between the countries.” 2 And yet had Mr. Adams from the 
beginning been able to read the inmost mind of all the members 
of the British Cabinet, though he might have postponed a blunt 
presentation of the alternative, and though he might have 

1 Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, n. 359 n. 

2 Adams to Seward, September 8, 1863. 


I 9 11 *] the seizure op the laird rams. 299 

softened it somewhat in language, he could not have changed 
its substance. The fact had become patent, and sooner or later 
the fact had to be clothed in some form of words. The pass had 
come when nothing short of impending war would bridle the 
English aristocracy. Lord Palmerston, indeed, had to uphold 
Lord Russell, else Lord Russell would have resigned and the 
Cabinet would have fallen, but Lord Palmerston could not de¬ 
fend and never did defend his colleague without stultifying 
himself. The Crown Counsel declined to stretch the Foreign 
Enlistment Act to cover the case of the rams, but Palmerston, 
as Prime Minister, had in Parliament refused to amend the 
statute because it sufficed, and this notwithstanding an avowal 
by Earl Russell, which he must have known, that the escape of 
the Alabama was a scandal. On consideration Lord Palmerston 
could think of nothing better to do than to buy the rams for 
the navy. But Bravay, when asked, would not sell. Such con¬ 
ditions could not long continue without the fall of the ministry 
or the release of the ships. The position was not tenable. And 
Earl Russell in reply to Mr. Adams, feeling what he risked and 
how he was beset, told him with bitterness that he did not appre¬ 
ciate what had been done for him. The Earl began by observ¬ 
ing that he had read “your letter of the 5th instant . . . with 
great regret.” He insisted that the Cabinet had taken every 
step to enforce the law which was “within their competency,” 
and that they would, “from a due regard to their own good 
faith, and to the national dignity, continue ... to pursue the 
same course.” He concluded by hoping “that the Government 
at Washington may take a calmer and more dispassionate view 
of these matters than seems to be inferred from your note.” 1 
Earl Russell could have made no such mild reply as this had he 
been in possession of Mr. Seward’s despatch, no matter what 
the consequences might have been to himself or to England. 

Whatever might have been Earl Russell’s anxieties and 
troubles, and however strong the Cabinet’s wish “faithfully to 
perform” their duty, Mr. Adams too well knew their weakness 
to relax for an instant his grasp. On the contrary, after the 
seizure of the rams his tone rose from one of stern remonstrance 
to one of sterner menace. Come what might, so long as he stayed 
in England, those rams should never sail. 

1 Earl Russell to Mr. Adams , September n, 1863. 


300 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

In his letter of September 11 Earl Russell had only promised 
that the rams should be held “ until satisfactory evidence can 
be given as to their destination, or, at all events, until the in¬ 
quiries which are now being prosecuted . . . shall have been 
brought to a conclusion.” To this my father rejoined that if 
Lord Russell felt impelled to tell him that he had read the 
letter of September 5 with “ great regret,” it could not “ ex¬ 
ceed the regret with which I wrote it.” 

I trust I may be pardoned if I was somewhat moved on perceiv¬ 
ing that the peace of two great countries, and the lives of perhaps 
thousands of the people inhabiting them, were about to be seriously 
endangered, ... by reason of the want of a scruple of technical 
evidence to prove a gross and flagrant fraud. With regard to the 
opinion of Her Majesty’s Customs Agent at Liverpool, I had al¬ 
ready had abundant cause to know the value of that in various . . . 
remonstrances against the notorious proceedings at that port. If 
Her Majesty’s Ministers look no further for proof to invalidate the 
evidence which I have had the honor to present, I can readily fore¬ 
see what will be the issue. ... I may be pardoned if I here remind 
your Lordship of the significant language used in a parallel case in 
former days by that distinguished British statesman George Can¬ 
ning, when he deprecated the consequence of “permitting the paltry, 
pettifogging way of fitting out ships in British harbors” to “sneak 
his country into a war.” 

If then, there be any virtue in the authority upon which Her 
Majesty’s Government deliberately decided that the provisions of 
the Foreign Enlistment Act could be enforced, without . . . amend¬ 
ment, this is surely a most fitting and urgent occasion. ... I have 
reason to believe that no efforts are intermitted to prepare the war 
vessels for immediate departure. ... I shall be little surprised 
at learning . . . of . . . any . . . expedient, however audacious 
. . . which may have for its object the possession of these for¬ 
midable ships. 1 

Since Trafalgar no British minister had endured such lan¬ 
guage, and Lord John Russell could not endure it in silence 
and yet hope to keep his authority in Parliament. As it was, 
this haughty aristocrat was soon to hear himself accused of 
cringing before a foreign power. So when Lord John came 
to answer imputations against the honesty of his subordinates 
and reflections on his own common sense, he launched into 
1 Mr. Adams to Earl Russell, September 16, 1863. 


I 9 II-] THE seizure of the laird rams. 301 

vaunts which he knew to be untrue, and, what was worse, 
which he knew might before long become the jest of Europe, 
by being published, if not at home, at least in America. 

There are, however, passages in your letter of the 16th, as well 
as in some of your former ones, which so plainly and repeatedly 
imply an intimation of hostile proceeding toward Great Britain on 
the part of the Government of the United States, unless steps are 
taken by Her Majesty’s Government which the law does not 
authorize, or unless the law which you consider as insufficient is 
altered, that I deem it incumbent upon me, in behalf of Her 
Majesty’s Government, frankly to state to you that Her Majesty’s 
Government will not be induced by any such consideration, either 
to overstep the limits of the law 7 or to propose to Parliament any 
new law which they may not, for reasons of their own, think proper 
to be adopted. They will not shrink from any consequences of 
such a decision. 1 

The very day after he had pledged his word that nothing 
could induce the ministry to which he belonged “to overstep 
the limits of the law,” he received notice from the American 
legation that a strong detachment of the crew of the Florida 
had reached Liverpool, consigned from Brest, by a commander 
in the Confederate navy, to Captain Bulloch, who had built 
the Alabama , and who was then building the rams. Such a 
violation of neutrality,. Mr. Adams was very sure, “if com¬ 
mitted by any agent of the United States, would be likely to 
attract the immediate notice of Her Majesty’s Government,” 
but this was incidental. The coming to England of this force 
indicated a design to seize these ships and take them to sea by 
violence. 2 

Hitherto Liverpool had been solidly for the South. Now it 
split into factions. The officials of the Custom House were 
more convinced than ever that the Lairds were spotless, and 
that, even if they were building battle-ships for the Confeder¬ 
ates, they might be implicitly trusted to notify the Govern¬ 
ment in season, of the day and hour on which they were to sail. 
So high did the reputation of the Lairds for truth and veracity 
stand among this gentry. The naval officers, on their side, 
were equally convinced that there was grave danger of an 

1 Earl Russell to Mr. Adams , September 25, 1863. 

2 Mr. Adams to Earl Russell , September 24, 1863 (received September 26). 


3 02 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


outbreak, and there can be little doubt that some attempt at 
a rescue would have been made, had not the guarding of the 
rams been assigned to Captain Inglefield of the Majestic. For 
once the Ministry employed, in the enforcement of their neu¬ 
trality, an energetic, competent and honest agent. Captain 
Inglefield did not rest until he had opened the docks, towed 
the battle-ships into the river, and anchored them under the 
guns of his frigate, with a strong guard on board. 

Only a consecutive perusal of the correspondence of those 
months can make us realize how high passions ran. On Sep¬ 
tember 24 Sir Roundell Palmer became Attorney-General, 
and the tone of the Law Officers of* the Crown sank lower than 
ever. Conversely affairs in Liverpool waxed warlike. Captain 
Inglefield made all his preparations for boarding the ram 
called El Mounassir in force, should the Lairds try to run her 
out on some foggy night. On October 25 he wrote confiden¬ 
tially to the Admiralty, that the ill-feeling among the Laird 
hands was so great that he had obtained one of the fastest 
steamers on the river, because, when it came to towing the ram 
from the dock, “one back-turn of the tug’s wheels might send 
our pinnace and crew to the bottom (should it be found neces¬ 
sary to board), . . . [therefore] I determined to send a fast 
steamer which would be quite a match for the tug-boat, and 
could act, in case of necessity, to take forcible possession. . . . 
I proposed . . . (on receipt of a preconcerted signal) to em¬ 
bark sixty armed men at a few minutes’ notice, and so to put 
myself speedily in a position to support the . . . Custom House 
officers.” 1 To the Custom House the Lairds continued to be 
to the end as innocent as lambs. On October 14, long after the 
crew of the Florida had arrived, the Collector wrote to the 
Commissioners of Customs that, because of the presence of 
these men, “It appears that apprehensions are entertained 
that forcible possession may be taken of these ships, and that 
they may be carried away by Confederate agency; I have 
therefore instituted careful inquiry . . . and the result of 
such inquiry is, . . . that there is not the slightest foundation 
for supposing that any such intention exists.” 2 

1 Captain Inglefield to Vice-Admiral Sir F. Grey, October 25, 1863. Appendix 
to the Case presented on the part of the Government of Her Britannic Majesty (at 
Geneva), n. 417. 

2 Edwards to the Commissioners of Customs, October 14, 1863. Ib. n. 401. 


1 91 1 .] THE SEIZURE OE THE LAIRD RAMS. 303 

On October 29 Mr. Adams pointed out to Mr. Seward that, 
while he had confidence in Captain Inglefield, it was remarkable 
“that any such question as the defiance of the Government in 
a leading British port should be supposed possible,” and com¬ 
mented on the fact that though Mr. Laird, member for Birken¬ 
head, was said to be a timid man, he had dared, in a speech at 
Liverpool, “to threaten the Government itself, if they attempt 
to interpose their power to prevent his evading the law of the 
land, even though thereby it should hazard the peace of the 
country.” 

By the middle of October every one whom Bravay had origi¬ 
nally mentioned as being builders of the rams had repudiated 
him. No one would even consider them as a possible purchase 
except the Sultan of Turkey, who recently had intimated that, 
if such ships were really for sale he might like to see the plans. 
He was, however, not dealing through the Viceroy, and was 
committed to absolutely nothing. On October 16 Earl Russell 
received this telegram from Mr. Colquhoun: “The Viceroy 
denies emphatically that he has in any manner engaged to in¬ 
duce the Porte to purchase the iron vessels. He declares that 
the subject was never mentioned between himself and M. 
Bravay, and that the latter is perfectly at liberty to do what he 
pleases with them. His Highness from the first refused to 
recognize any of Bravay’s contracts.” All this time the Lairds 
clamored for their ships louder and louder, and Lord Russell 
applied to the Law Officers to know how to justify the seizure. 
From the beginning Sir Roundell had been of the mind that the 
seizure could not be justified under the law, yet the seizure had 
been made, and he could only tell Lord Russell that he must 
inform the Lairds that he had acted “under the authority of 
the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act.” But still Sir 
Roundell was as timid as any hunted hare. The main question, 
after all, said he, is “whether M. Bravay in fitting them [the 
rams] out at Liverpool had a fixed intention that they should 
be employed in the Confederate service.” This question, he 
continued, depending largely “upon moral and circumstantial 
evidence, makes it important to exclude, if possible, the sup¬ 
position” that “M. Bravay may really have contemplated a 
sale of these vessels to the Turkish through the Egyptian Gov¬ 
ernment . . . with respect to which our present information 


3°4 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


is not satisfactory.” 1 Sir RoundelPs opinion was actually 
given five days after Mr. Colquhoun’s telegram. It would not 
be easy in all the long roll of opinions of attorney-generals to 
find one more craven. 

So the autumn wore away, and as winter came on Lord Russell 
meditated on facing Parliament with these rams on his hands, 
and Sir Roundell on meeting the Court of Exchequer without a 
bill of exceptions signed by the Chief Baron. Sir Roundell 
knew that Sir Frederick would do him and the Ministry all the 
harm he could, and Sir Roundell was not the man to coerce a 
domineering judge. His predicament was almost as unpleasant 
as Earl Russell’s, while he had a thinner skin and far less cour¬ 
age. So when it came to the test between these men Sir Fred¬ 
erick routed Sir Roundell and precipitated chaos. On this 
subject Sir Roundell was always somewhat sore, and he sub¬ 
sequently, in his Memorials, published his version of what hap¬ 
pened. His tale begins with the jury trial. I give it in his own 
words somewhat condensed. 2 

The Lord Chief Baron, after summing up the evidence, put 
before the jury the question of law on which it was his duty 
to direct them. The Chief Baron, having stated that the word 
“equip” in the statute meant “arm,” went on to say: 

It seems to me that, if the Alabama sailed from Liverpool without 
any arms at all, as a mere ship in ballast, so that her armament was 
put on board at Terceira, which is not in Her Majesty’s dominions, 
then the Foreign Enlistment Act was not violated at all. The 
question is, was there any intention, in the port of Liverpool or any 
other port, that the ship should be (in the language of the Act of 
Parliament) equipped, fitted out, or armed, with the object of tak¬ 
ing part in any contest? If you think that the object was to equip, 
furnish, fit out, or arm that vessel at Liverpool, then there is suffi¬ 
cient matter for your consideration. But if you think the object 
really was to build a vessel in obedience to orders and in compliance 
with a contract, leaving it to those who bought it to make what use 
they thought fit of it, then it appears to me that the Foreign En¬ 
listment Act has not in any degree been broken. 

On the one hand it was admitted that the ship had been built 
as a ship of war for the Confederate States; on the other hand 

1 The Law Officers of the Crown to Earl Russell , October 19 and 21, 1863. 

2 Earl of Selbome, Memorials , Family and Personal, n. 442 et seq. 


I 9 II-] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 305 

there was nothing to show that she had been armed, or that 
there had been an intention to arm her, within British juris¬ 
diction. On this evidence and with these directions the jury 

had no choice but to return a verdict against the Crown, acquitting 
the ship, which they did. We desired to bring the question of law 
. . . before the House of Lords. This could only be done at that 
time in one way, by what was called a “Bill of Exceptions’’ to the 
ruling of the Judge; which it was necessary to tender immediately. 
. . . This we proposed to do, and wrote out and would have handed 
in our exceptions, but for the interposition of the Judge; who said, 
“I will accept any Bill of Exceptions you choose to tender.” The 
proceeding was technical; . . . and it was usual, in cases of impor¬ 
tance, to allow time for drawing it up. When, therefore, the Lord 
Chief Baron intimated that we were not to be bound by what had 
been prepared at the moment, ... we left the court well satisfied 
with that understanding. . . . That any difference could arise as 
to what the direction given to the jury was, did not occur to any of 
us as possible; we had the words before us, which seemed unambigu¬ 
ous. If the Lord Chief Baron were not satisfied with our way of 
putting it, it could be put in his own words, or in any other way 
(the substance being the same) which he might consider more accu¬ 
rate. Our surprise, therefore, was great, when, after a long corre¬ 
spondence with Sir William Atherton during the vacation, his Lord- 
ship disclaimed the ruling, . . . and refused to sign any Bill of 
Exceptions at all. In vain did Sir William Atherton press upon 
him the words which he had used, and especially what he said 
about the Alabama. He replied that “the Alabama had no more 
to do with the matter than Noah’s Ark.” 

So stood the case, when Sir William Atherton was compelled, by 
the illness of which he died early in the following year, to retire 
from office. I succeeded him as Attorney-General on the 24th of 
September; my own place being taken by Collier. 

When the Courts met at the beginning of Michaelmas Term, my 
first official duty was to move for an enlargement of the time within 
which the Bill of Exceptions, in the Alexandra case, might be 
signed. I said I had no reason to believe that, on that subject, there 
would be any difference between our opponents and ourselves; and 
that I could not relinquish the hope that the Lord Chief Baron 
might still agree to what was necessary, in order to obtain such a 
determination of the real question as might be satisfactory to all 
parties, and useful to the public. But the Lord Chief Baron inter¬ 
posed; “he saw no prospect whatever of any change in the view 
which he had taken in his correspondence with Sir William Ather- 

39 


3°6 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


ton.” He denied that he had told the jury the ship must be armed 
in order to come within the Act, and said he had left the matter at 
large to them. When I stated my conviction that the jury had been 
guided by what they understood to be his interpretation of the 
Statute, he answered, — “Nothing of the kind.” His colleagues 
upon the Bench did not seem to like the situation; and, in their 
anxiety to find a way of escape from it, they suggested that they 
had power, by making new Rules of Court, to give a right of Appeal 
in Crown suits, . . . and intimated that they were prepared to 
make use of that power. ... To this the Lord Chief Baron was will¬ 
ing to agree. He was more than eighty years old, having presided 
over the Court of Exchequer for nineteen years, with general re¬ 
spect. To press any further a public controversy with him, of which 
the character must have become personal, would have been painful 
and unseemly; and, under these circumstances, the only thing pos¬ 
sible was to give up the Bill of Exceptions which he refused to sign, 
and to move for a new trial, hoping to have a right of Appeal under 
the new Rules, which were accordingly made. 

I obtained a Rule nisi for a new trial; and, on the motion that it 
should be made absolute, an elaborate argument took place. It 
was then admitted that the question did depend entirely upon the 
point of law which we had desired to raise by our Bill of Excep¬ 
tions. Judgment was given on the nth of January, 1864, when the 
Court was equally divided. The Lord Chief Baron took the same 
view of the law which we had understood him to lay down to the 
jury at the trial, and Baron Bramwell agreed with him. The other 
two judges, Barons Channel and Pigott, dissented, adopting the 
construction of the Statute upon which the Crown relied. As a 
necessary consequence of that equal division of opinion, the motion 
for a new trial was refused. In vain did we appeal to the Exchequer 
Chamber, and from the Exchequer Chamber to the House of Lords. 
In both it was held, by a majority of voices (though in both there were 
great judges who differed from the majority), that the Court of 
Exchequer had no power to make the new Rules giving us a right to 
appeal. The consequence was that the Alexandra was released, and 
passed into the service of the Confederate States. The question of 
law was left undetermined (I should rather say) in greater uncer¬ 
tainty than before. 1 

When Sir Roundell wrote his Memorials , toward the close of 
his life, he very naturally wished to make a good case for him- 

1 Sir Roundell Palmer was not absolutely exact in his report of the instruc¬ 
tions given by Pollock, C. B. See p. 284, supra. 


ign.] THE SEIZURE OE THE LAIRD RAMS. 307 

self, but the best is poor. He seems to have been afraid both 
of Lord Westbury and of the Chief Baron, who, though nearly 
eighty-one, had no scruples and a bitter tongue. Sir Roundell 
could only have appeared well had he shown courage and sin¬ 
gleness of purpose. First he had to deal with the law. The 
decision in the Santissima Trinidad stood in his way, as it subse¬ 
quently stood in the way of the United States at Geneva. Mr. 
Bancroft Davis, who represented the United States at Geneva, 
treated it properly. Standing alone, said he, the Santissima 
Trinidad is “at variance with common sense, and with the whole 
current of the action of nations.’’ If it must be taken alone, he 
should ask the Tribunal to disregard it. Happily, he argued, 
there is no necessity to take it alone, since, at the same term, 
and on the next day, it was so explained and limited by Chief 
Justice Marshall, in the Gran Para / that the two cases can be 
read together, forming, as it were, but one. 2 Any errors made by 
Justice Story on March 12, 1822, were corrected by the head of 
the Court on March 13. 

Had Sir William Atherton lived, some such argument might 
have been made, for Sir William was a stiff er man than Sir Roun¬ 
dell, and at the jury trial resolutely refused to commit himself. 
Afterward I came to know Sir Roundell rather well, consider¬ 
ing the difference in our age and rank. He was a very agree¬ 
able man, but not famous either for ingenuousness or pugnacity, 
especially when on the weaker side. Here he found himself in 
a dilemma. Lord Westbury was committed to the doctrine of 
animus. Sir Roundell did not wish to run counter to Lord 
Westbury, therefore he conceded the soundness of the Santis¬ 
sima Trinidad. He did not insist that the meaning of a statute 
on which hung peace and war could not be juggled with. He 
himself was always only too ready to split straws. He split 
straws here. He denied any international obligation to enforce 
municipal law. Nor did he dare, when Sir Frederick repudi¬ 
ated his promise to allow the Government’s exceptions, and 
brazenly sneered at his own written words, to take the old 
man by the throat. He should, if he had been in earnest, have 
thrown up the case and reported the falsehood of the judge to 
Parliament for the legislature to deal with, as with an inter- 

1 7 Wheaton, 471. 

2 Case of the United States (at Geneva), 198, 202. 


308 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

national breach of faith. Nothing of all this did he even attempt. 
He tamely argued his cause on the basis of the Santissima 
Trinidad , thus laying himself and the Cabinet open to an out¬ 
rage from Sir Frederick which was remembered and quoted 
both in and out of Parliament for years to come. 

The result of the argument on the part of the Crown seems to be 
this (said Sir Frederick), A shipbuilder may build a ship altogether of 
a warlike character, and may arm it completely with the latest and 
most mischievous invention for the destruction of human beings, and 
may then sell it to one of two belligerents, with a perfect fitness for 
immediate cruising, and ready to commit hostilities the instant it is 
beyond the boundary of neutral territory, provided there was no pre¬ 
vious contract or agreement for it. But if there be any contract or 
agreement for it, it cannot be made to order with the slightest war¬ 
like character about it, though this be part of the accustomed and 
usual trade of this country. . . . The means of evasion which this fur¬ 
nishes is obvious. A signal, a word, a gesture, may convey an order 
wholly incapable of being proved. It is unnecessary to dwell upon 
this; it is at once perfectly obvious; and the real difference between 
a crime and an act of commerce may, in point of evidence, entirely 
disappear. To use an expression borrowed from one familiar in 
Westminster Hall about a coach and six, a whole fleet of ships might 
sail through such an Act of Parliament as this, if this be the mean¬ 
ing of it; and we are to believe that our legislators exhausted all 
their wisdom in settling the language of the 7th clause, and had none 
remaining to perceive the enormous loop-hole which they had left. 

This thrust by Sir Frederick at Sir Roundell and Lord 
Westbury is another instance of that social incoherence which 
paralyzed the aristocracy in its conflict with America. Sir 
Frederick was a Tory politician, and as a Tory he used this op¬ 
portunity to discredit a Whig Cabinet and a Whig Chancellor. 
For Sir Frederick stigmatized, as dishonest, opinions which Lord 
Westbury was known to entertain, and which he announced 
from the bench in 1865 in Ex parte Chavasse. Nor could 
the attack on Lord Westbury have been accidental; for Sir 
Frederick paraphrased the language afterward used by the 
Chancellor, and this paraphrasing must have been intended for 
parliamentary effect. It did have a very considerable effect, 
as the debate a few weeks later proved. Still deep as Pollock 
may have cut, he cut less deep than did his associate, Baron 


ignj THE seizure of the laird rams. 309 

Bramwell, who was the only one of Pollock’s three associates 
who sustained him. Baron Bramwell was a better lawyer than 
Sir Frederick, and his opinion carried more weight. He said, in 
substance, that setting aside all personal opinions as to the 
better policy to pursue in the enforcement of neutrality, he, as a 
judge, had only to consider the meaning of the statute, and he 
thought that the statute intended to render penal only the 
sending forth of an armed ship to participate in war. “I am 
aware of the consequences if this is the law. A ship may sail 
from a port ready to receive a warlike equipment, that equip¬ 
ment may leave in another vessel, and be transferred to her as 
soon as the neutral limit is passed, . . . and thus the spirit of 
international law may be violated, and the letter and spirit of 
the municipal Act evaded. But as the law stands, . . . I see no 
remedy. ... I am aware, of course, that it would be easy to 
. . . make a law prohibiting the sending forth of [such] a ship. 
. . . Whether such a law would be desirable I do not presume 
to suggest.” Baron Bramwell was right, it was not the func¬ 
tion of the judges but of the Cabinet to decide “ whether such 
a law would be desirable,” and if the Cabinet honestly wished 
England to do her duty as a neutral, and were advised by their 
counsel, as they had been, that the statute was imperfect, noth¬ 
ing could be plainer than that an amendment “was desirable.” 
Why Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell so obstinately declined 
to ask Parliament for additional legislation they never could, or 
at least they never would, satisfactorily explain. The only con¬ 
vincing explanation would have been that, as honest men them¬ 
selves, they had not supposed that English judges could have 
resorted to flagrant equivocation to compass a political end, 
especially when that end involved a repudiation of solemn 
engagements with the Crown. But if this were their reason 
they could hardly have given it, in view of the vulnerability of 
Lord Westbury. 

So far as the Chief Baron was concerned, it is not very sur¬ 
prising, considering the manner of man he was, that he should 
have been willing to go great lengths to prevent his rulings 
from coming before a higher English tribunal, for the character 
of those rulings was very shortly and very thoroughly exposed 
by the Scotch Court of Session. 

Many of the brightest ornaments of the British bench and 


3io 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


bar have been Scotchmen, and the Court of Session, to say the 
least of it, has always stood as high as the Court of Exchequer. 
The Court of Session in 1864, without hesitation, unanimously 
swept aside the pettifogging of the Exchequer in a decision 
which, if it had been made in England in 1863, would have 
saved the nation from bitter subsequent humiliation. 

On December 10, 1863, the Collector of Customs at Glasgow 
seized the ship Pampero , as the Alexandra had been seized, for 
violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act, and the Lord Advo¬ 
cate filed an information in which he did not allege an arma¬ 
ment because he could not do so. On May 5, 1864, the case 
came up on a preliminary objection made by the claimants to 
the competency of evidence to prove an “equipment” in contra¬ 
vention of the statute, when the evidence fell short of proving 
an armament. Lord Ardmillan held that, “The actual arming 
... or intention to arm ... is not necessary to the constitu¬ 
tion of this offence. Any operation whatever in the way of 
equipment, tending to the fulfilment of the statutory in ten t,” 
is an offence under the Act. 1 

After this ruling the claimants agreed that judgment should 
be entered for the Crown, and the building of a Confederate 
navy on the Clyde ended. 

Occasionally, as Mr. Gladstone said of himself, even the 
wisest men behave as if distraught. Mr. Seward was, unques¬ 
tionably, one of the ablest ministers of Foreign Affairs which 
our country has produced, and yet Mr. Seward in the winter 
of 1863 perpetrated an act of such astounding recklessness 
that, as I look back upon it, I am aghast. No one in America 
knew so well as Seward the extreme tension in England in 
December, 1863; no one knew so well the pressure on Lord 
Russell, or the precarious tenure of power of the Cabinet. No 
one could appreciate, as he could appreciate, the disaster it 
would be to the United States should the Palmerston admin¬ 
istration be defeated in the Commons on the issue of the seiz¬ 
ure of the rams. And yet Mr. Seward in December, 1863, sent 
to Congress, appended to the President’s message, not only 
the whole correspondence touching the rams, which he knew 
Earl Russell was sedulously reserving, but even those instruc¬ 
tions of July 11 which Mr. Adams had thought so compro- 

1 Lord Advocate v. Flemming, 2 Cases in the Court of Session, 3d Series, 1060. 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


I 9 11 -] 


311 


mising that he risked his reputation and his political life 
rather than present. 

The shock in England was prodigious, coming, as it did, on 
the heels of the Alexandra scandal, and immediately before the 
meeting of Parliament. Mr. Seward had said bluntly what 
Mr. Adams had said discreetly, that England had no law for 
the protection of countries with whom she was at peace, there¬ 
fore those countries must, at whatever risk, protect themselves, 
and this statement had been proved to be true by the antics 
of an octogenarian chief justice. As Mr. Adams wrote to Mr. 
Seward: “The feeling of the profession seems, on the whole, 
to be one of mortification at this spectacle. . . . The English 
are indifferent to reproach, but they sensibly feel ridicule. 
Proudly as they boast of the perfection of their domestic in¬ 
stitutions, it is with no little regret that they open their eyes 
only to perceive so glaring an instance of their defects.” 1 

Nor was this all, or the worst. Englishmen now understood 
for the first time the position into which the Palmerston ad¬ 
ministration had brought their country. The culmination of 
English pride and self-complacency is marked by the appear¬ 
ance of Macaulay’s History, and may be fixed pretty precisely 
as the year i860. That period of elation lasted until the publi¬ 
cation in Washington of this diplomatic correspondence. From 
the wound it then received it never recovered. Go back as far 
as they would Englishmen had bragged that England had never 
turned her back upon an enemy. Sometimes she had been de¬ 
feated, it is true, but she had never been intimidated. Yet 
in 1864, when they came to read this diplomatic record, they 
learned how the most distinguished member of the great house 
of Russell, with his own admission before his eyes that the 
escape of the Alabama was a scandal, and with the whole world 
ringing with the boasts of the Confederates that with certain 
English-built ships they would devastate the seacoast of the 
Northern States, had told the American Minister on September 
1 that he could not “interfere in any way with those vessels,” 
out of respect for English law; and how, on the day after this 
declaration, he had seized those very ships, in defiance of law, 

1 Adams to Seward , April 8, 1864. Mr. Adams probably received most of his 
impressions touching legal opinion from Lord Wensleydale, an intimate friend. 
Lord Wensleydale dissented when the House of Lords dismissed the Alexandra 
appeal in 1864. 


312 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

because of an intimation that hostilities must follow upon their 
escape. 

Even so the most damaging revelations had not been dis¬ 
closed. Mr. Adams himself never knew that on the day Earl 
Russell assured him that Gladstone’s Newcastle speech did not 
‘‘justify any of the inferences that had been drawn from it, of 
a disposition in the Government now to adopt a new policy,” 1 
Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone had jointly urged intervention, 
and that on that day the design had been formed to engage the 
French Emperor in an attempt to influence the Cabinet, after 
other means had failed. Nor, more humiliating still, though 
Englishmen might surmise, they could not yet prove, that Lord 
Russell held the Laird rams without trial, in the hope of starv¬ 
ing the Lairds into making to him a sale, because his Attorney- 
General did not dare a second time to face Sir Frederick. It 
was only a year later that Lord Russell told Mr. Adams that 
Sir RoundelPs timidity had driven the Cabinet to adopt the 
expedient of buying the rams, since he would not trust a jury 
with Pollock on the bench. 

“I,” Mr. Adams wrote to Seward on February 16, 1865, 
“ remarked that I had become convinced, from the result of 
the last trial, that the United States could stand no chance 
before a jury. His Lordship said that it was in consequence of 
doubts of the Crown lawyers, in the case of the iron-clads, as 
to the possible presence of one or two advocates of the Confed¬ 
erates on the jury, that it had been decided to buy them up. 
People here now took sides, almost as vehemently on our 
questions, as we did ourselves.” 2 

On February 4, the first night of the session, Parliament 
showed its temper. Lord Derby expressed the hope that Earl 
Russell had answered, in what Earl Russell afterward described 
as “becoming terms,” Seward’s instructions of July 11, touch¬ 
ing the destruction of Confederate cruisers in English ports by 
the American navy. On February 9 Earl Russell, luckily for 
himself, was able to answer that, when the noble Earl had 
asked his question, he did not remember any such despatch. 
“I find since, that it was a despatch written by Mr. Seward to 
Mr. Adams, but Mr. Adams never thought proper to lay that 

1 Adams to Seward , October 24, 1862. 

2 Adams to Seward, February 16, 1865. 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


ign.] 


3 T 3 


despatch before me, and therefore I was spared the difficulty 
and the pain of giving an appropriate answer to it.” 

Then the Earl of Derby pressed Earl Russell harder. “I 
presume,” said he, “that it has now been laid before the noble 
Earl, because I see that a reference is made by Mr. Adams” to 
an answer “to several despatches, among which he includes the 
despatch of July n.” 

Earl Russell. “ I certainly do not find among the papers the 
despatch of July n, and Mr. Adams informed me expressly 
that he had received that despatch and did not hand it to me. 
That being so, I should not do so useless a thing as endeavor to 
get up a wrangle with Mr. Adams on a despatch which was 
never presented.” 

All this disturbed Mr. Adams, but not because it injured his 
own standing, for it improved it. As he told Mr. Seward in a 
letter he wrote him on February n: “The effect is to raise my 
action in the British estimation rather more than it deserves, 
or I altogether relish;” for he did not “relish” having his 
reputation raised at the expense of his friends and more espe¬ 
cially of his chief. All England saw that the United States had 
won a magnificent victory, and men paused in their astonish¬ 
ment, not knowing at which to wonder most, the victory itself 
or the skill of the champion. Lord Derby, who was the head of 
the Conservative party, may be supposed to have fairly ex¬ 
pressed British educated opinion, and Lord Derby, in the de¬ 
bate, went far. “I think Mr. Adams took upon himself a grave 
responsibility — a very grave one it was — in not presenting 
it [Mr. Seward’s instructions of July n]; and I think that in 
so doing he acted as a friend of peace and a friend of the good 
relations between the two countries. I think it required no 
small degree of moral courage to take the course he did, and 
that he did good service to both countries by withholding the 
despatch. . . . And here I must observe that, in all the com¬ 
munications which it has been his duty to make to the noble 
Earl, Mr. Adams has acquitted himself with the strictest 
courtesy, and acted as well, under the circumstances, as it was 
possible to do.” 1 

Then Lord Derby went on to describe the magnitude of the 

1 Hansard, Third Series, CLXxm. 429, 430. Lord Derby in the debate of 
February n, 1864. 


40 


314 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

American triumph. Having summed up the sequence of the 
correspondence which culminated in Lord Russell’s despatch 
of September 1, refusing to interfere, of Mr. Adams’ despatch 
of September 3, intimating that the escape of the rams must 
mean war, but suppressing the July instructions, and of Lord 
Russell’s answer of September 4, stating that the determina¬ 
tion not to interfere was under reconsideration, Lord Derby 
continued: 

“I defy anyone, even the least prejudiced, not to infer from 
it [the volume issued by the State Department] a great triumph 
to the diplomacy of the United States, and that the British 
Government had given to intimidation and menace that which 
they would not yield to a sense of justice.” 1 

Mr. Adams was surprised at the effect which the publication 
of the correspondence in England had upon his personal posi¬ 
tion. From this time forward he stood quite apart. He com¬ 
mented upon the phenomenon with some wonder in his diary. 
He could see nothing so very remarkable in a minister, entrusted 
with a negotiation of supreme importance, taking the respon¬ 
sibility of temporarily withholding a despatch which he thought 
likely to be injurious, even if by so doing he risked reprimand 
himself. He knew, he noted, that he had been calm throughout, 
and undisturbed by doubts touching his duty; and this was how 
he always impressed me. He had something nearly approach¬ 
ing a perfect poise of mind. 

When, however, on reading the debates in Parliament, he per¬ 
ceived that Lord Derby and the opposition generally were in¬ 
clined to use him as foil by which to discredit both Mr. Seward 
and Earl Russell, he determined to set himself right. He 
wrote to Mr. Seward that nothing could be “more unsafe to a 
diplomatic agent than an approach to a false position be¬ 
tween two Governments;” and he then pointed out, as 
gently as he could, how narrow the margin had been be¬ 
tween success and ruin, and how trifling an error might still 
work disaster: 

“The publication of the diplomatic papers annexed to the 
President’s message has elicited much comment in Parlia¬ 
ment and in the newspapers, upon your instructions to me, 
. . . particularly that portion of them which declared the 

1 Hansard, Third Series, clxxiii. 432. 


1911.J THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 315 

intention of the Government, under certain contingencies, to 
enter English ports and seize obnoxious vessels.” 

He then explained that he had not intended to suppress those 
instructions altogether, but to reserve them as a last resource, 
when the British should have made their final answer declining 
to stop the rams. 

But when that moment arrived, which was on the reception of 
Lord Russell’s note of the 1st of September, I felt so fearful that the 
declaration of that intention would close all further possibility of 
preserving the peace between the two countries, that I preferred to 
take the other course indicated in my reply of the 5th, which was, 
while intimating the strong character of my instructions, to propose 
to await new ones adapted to the precise emergency rather than to 
declare them. As matters actually turned, this proceeding seems to 
have been fortunate; for while the general statement in my note 
left on this Government the impression that war might be the alter¬ 
native in contemplation, the language took no such specific shape 
as to compel it to resent it as a threat. 1 

It is only justice to both Mr. Seward and Lord Russell to say 
that neither bore malice for anything that had occurred. Lord 
Russell was as cordial to my father as ever, and Mr. Seward be¬ 
haved in the handsomest manner. When he understood that 
“ British statesmen whose opinions the President would be the 
last to undervalue, have declared that in their judgment portions 
of that communication are disrespectful and menacing toward 
Her Majesty’s Government,” he instructed Mr. Adams to refer 
the paper “to Earl Russell’s own criticism, with the request 
that whatever expressions contained in it he shall consider ex¬ 
ceptionable be deemed to be hereby withdrawn.” He added 
expressions of regret that any words had been used which 
might be taken as matter of offence. 2 

This atonement for an indiscretion did not, however, reach 
London until long after the moment had passed which Mr. 
Adams had anticipated as being likely to determine the fate of 
the ministry. The crisis came in the House of Commons, 
nominally on a motion for the communication of this corre¬ 
spondence to Parliament, but the debate took such a form that 

1 Adams to Seward , February 11, 1864. 

2 Seward to Adams , March 2, 1864. 


316 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

the division was tantamount to a vote on a motion to censure. 
If it had been carried, the ministry must have resigned. 

As presented to Great Britain the matter in dispute had now 
risen to a level above ordinary party differences. A question 
was to be settled which touched the very foundation of English 
society, as English society was then organized, and the emotion 
was correspondingly profound. The aristocracy had broken 
down in a policy of aggression, and now the ministers who rep¬ 
resented that aristocracy appealed to the exponents of democ¬ 
racy, like Bright, Cobden, and Forster, for support. They car¬ 
ried the House, but only by defections from the ranks of those 
who normally should have voted to remove them and fill their 
places with more resolute men. How the handful of men who 
turned the scale would have voted had Seward’s instructions of 
July n been delivered, can only be conjectured. 

On the night of February 23, 1864, Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald, 1 
member for Horsham, moved for copies of all the papers re¬ 
lating to the Laird rams which were in the possession of the 
Government, and thereupon a debate arose which lawyers of 
the last generation long remembered both for its ability and its 
acrimony. Mr. Fitzgerald asked how it came that Earl Russell, 
having declined to interfere with the rams for lack of evidence 
down to September 3, 1863, stopped them on September 4, 
with nothing new against them save one or two depositions, de¬ 
scribed by Mr. Adams as “of no great additional weight.” 

What passed to lead to this sudden change of opinion on the part 
of the noble Earl ? That has been answered by a despatch from 
Mr. Adams himself [to Mr. Seward] . . . dated September 8, 1863. 
It states that — “At the last moment on Saturday, I sent a despatch 
[from Earl Russell] . . . just then put into my hands, signifying 
that the decision of the Government announced in his previous note 
of the 1st instant had, under the effect of my notes on the 3d in¬ 
stant, been subjected to reconsideration ” There, Sir, is the secret 
of the whole matter. The real truth is, that, while using language 
milder than that of the officials at Washington, Mr. Adams had yet 
used language so forcible as almost to be menacing, and in his 
despatch of the 3d September, couched in the most temperate lan- 

1 William Robert Seymour Vesey (1818-1885), son of William, second baron 
Fitzgerald, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under Lord Derby, 
1858-1859; governor of Bombay, 1866. The debate is reported in Hansard, 
Third Series, clxxiii. 955-1021. 


I 9 H.] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 317 

guage, the American minister pointed out distinctly that the event 
of the rams leaving the Mersey and inflicting injury on American 
commerce would infallibly lead to a war between this country and 
the United States. (Hear, hear, from ministerial benches.) I 
scarcely know what honorable gentlemen are cheering at when the 
statement I make is this, that the Government, without having any 
legal authority, and having stated that they had no legal authority 
to stop these rams, yet under the pressure of a menace held out that 
war would ensue if they did not stop them, proceeded to take that 
course. (Mr. Dunlap: Hear, hear.) Is that the statement which 
the honourable member cheers? Is it that we should have a Govern¬ 
ment who, having themselves announced that they had no legal 
authority for the act, yet in spite of the law seized the property of a 
British subject, because they were told by the representative of 
another power, that if they did not do so consequences would be 
serious? ... I can say, with truth, that there is no man who 
would more deprecate any difference or hostility between this 
country and the United States than myself. . . . But if I am to be 
told that the English Government, in order to avoid such a war, is 
to transgress the law and seize the property of a British subject 
without any justification, then I say that I will never approve the 
conduct of a minister who would take such a course; but,.on the 
contrary, am prepared to accept any consequences [rather] than 
pursue such a line of policy. 

It fell, of course, to Sir Roundell Palmer, the legal adviser of 
the ministry, to answer Mr. Fitzgerald, and Sir RoundelFs 
speech was exceedingly characteristic, and might be called 
amusingly disingenuous. At least Sir Hugh Cairns thought it 
so. Sir Roundell first protested that it was unheard of to ask 
a Government to print its evidence in advance of a prosecution, 
although in truth it had no evidence against the Lairds, better 
or stronger than that contained in Mr. Adams’ despatches, and 
the depositions annexed. He then went on to repel the accu¬ 
sation that the Government had yielded to menace, as Lord 
Derby had charged. 

On the whole, (said Sir Roundell,) it did not appear to the Govern¬ 
ment proper then [prior to September 1] to treat the vessels as liable 
to confiscation. That decision was announced to Mr. Adams on 
the 1 st of September. It is said, however, that Mr. Adams, on the 
3d of September, repeated his instances, and that on the 4th an 
order was given to detain these vessels, or to prevent them from 


318 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

leaving the port of Liverpool. That order, however, was not the 
result of a decision adopted by the Government after the receipt of 
Mr; Adams’ letter of the 3d of September, but, as stated in another 
place, of a decision arrived at previously. The Honorable Gentle¬ 
man asks whether any new information reached Earl Russell in the 
meantime. That is just the one thing contained in the papers . , . 
which we do not mean to tell him, but he may be sure that the Gov¬ 
ernment had grounds for what they did. 

As everybody knows now, on September 4, Earl Russell had 
nothing before him save the note of September 3, which had not 
been before him when he sent his note of September 1, nor any¬ 
thing of material importance which had not been before Sir 
Roundell when he gave his opinion of August 22, on which 
Earl Russell’s note of September 1 was founded. What had 
happened was that by September 3 the pressure on Earl Russell 
had reached the point at which he was, as it were, thrust forward, 
and, ignoring Sir Roundell, seized the rams regardless of law. 
Sir Roundell, very naturally, did not care to enter into this; so, 
sliding over details, he advanced to the seizure, which he can¬ 
didly admitted to be legally indefensible. “The Honorable 
Gentleman asks what right the Government had to detain the 
ships (Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald: Hear, hear!) The Honorable 
Gentleman cries ‘hear’; but I do not hesitate to say boldly, 
and in the face of the country, that the Government, on their 
own responsibility, detained them.” 

On the merits of his case Sir Roundell had made fatal admis¬ 
sions, and Sir Hugh Cairns, who was a much stronger lawyer 
than Sir Roundell, impaled him without mercy on the dilemma 
he presented: 

I find that Earl Russell on the 27th of March last, . . . said that 
he wished the United States Government to understand that he 
considered the case of the Alabama and the Oreto to be a scandal. 

. . . What did Earl Russell mean by saying that the case of the 
Alabama and the Oreto was a scandal? Did he mean that it was a 
scandal because, having laws to punish such a case, we did not 
enforce them? The Under Secretary of State shakes his head at 
this. Well, then, did Earl Russell mean that it was a scandal that 
we had no laws to punish such cases ? He must have meant one of 
these two things. . . . Now, let us suppose that the noble Lord 
thought the case of the Alabama and the Oreto was a scandal because 


IQII.] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 319 

that, having laws to punish, they were not put in force. Then . . . 
I want to know this . . . why did not the Government indict the 
persons who admitted openly that they had sent the Alabama out 
of the country? ... If the noble Earl meant that it was a scandal 
because, having laws, those laws were not enforced, I want to know 
why the Government has not put them into force? . . . 

Now let us take the other branch of the dilemma. Did the noble 
Earl mean that the case was a scandal, because we had not a better 
law to deal with the cases of the Alabama and the Oreto? Then, I 
ask, why have not the Government . . . proposed an alteration of 
the law? . . . Then, again, we have upon the very same day, a 
declaration from the noble Lord at the head of the Government. 
While the noble Earl was sending off his despatch to the Govern¬ 
ment of the United States, the noble Lord [Palmerston] said in this 
House, as to any alteration of our law: “I do hope and trust that 
the people and Government of the United States will believe that 
we are doing our best in every case to execute that law; but they 
must not imagine that any cry which may be raised will induce us 
to come down to this House with a proposal to alter the law. We 
have had — I have had — some experience of what any attempt of 
that sort may be expected to lead to, and I think there are several 
gentlemen sitting on this bench who would not be disposed, if I 
were so inclined myself, to concur in any such proposition.” . . . 

We are told that these words of the noble Earl [reproach and 
scandal] . . . were referred to elsewhere, and the noble Earl was asked 
to explain them. The noble Earl explained them in this way. He 
said in substance: “ I adhere to the opinion, and my reason is this: 
How can you describe in any other words an act of Parliament as 
to which the chief of one of our courts of law has said, ‘ You might 
sail a fleet of ships through it’?” . . . Will the House believe it 
possible that the noble Earl could have fallen into the error I am 
going to expose? What that very eminent and learned person said 
was this: 

“If I were to adopt the construction which the Crown desires to 
put upon the Foreign Enlistment Act, which I do not adopt, which 
I reprobate as false and erroneous, then, indeed, you might not 
drive a coach and six, but might sail a fleet of ships through the 
act of Parliament.” . . . 

We have had another confession from the Government to-night. 

. . . They send down an officer of the Admiralty to deal with the 
owners for the sale of their ships. I was quite amused at the manner 
in which the Attorney-General [Sir Roundell Palmer] dealt with this. 
He said, “Well, it was a very kind thing, a very humane thing.” 


3 2 ° 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


... I want the Attorney-General to tell me what does he think of 
dealing with a man around whose neck the Government has got 
the fangs and talons of the revenue officers. ... Was that fair deal¬ 
ing? Was that a seller and buyer ... on an even footing? The 
Government with its hands upon the ships, . . . saying to the 
builder, “Come, now, sell us these ships; let us buy them of you.” 
But what is the climax? The climax is this: The month of Febru¬ 
ary comes at last. Parliament meets, and the information can no 
longer be delayed. It must be filed, and then we have the last 
letter from the Treasury to Messrs. Laird, which I hope the House 
will have printed for its perusal in the papers about to be 
produced. . . . 

(Immediate) Treasury Chambers, February 8, 1864. 

Gentlemen, — In reply to your letter of the 3rd instant, I am commanded 
... to acquaint you that ... an information in the case of the iron-clads 
vessels built by you, and now under seizure by Her Majesty’s Government, will 
be filed in a few days, and that it may be necessary to send a commission, 
abroad for the purpose of collecting evidence. 

George A. Hamilton. 

Messrs. Laird Brothers. 

Collecting evidence! The seizure, according to the Government 
could only be made upon evidence, and four months after the seiz¬ 
ure the Government are going to collect evidence abroad. Sir, we 
have not got many papers from the Government this year, but I 
trust the House will insist upon the production of these. 

Among the bitter speeches of that night, the bitterest was 
Lord Robert Cecil’s, he who afterward became famous as the 
Marquis of Salisbury. 

I should not address the House, said he, if I saw any inclination 
among the honourable gentlemen opposite to rise, but they will not, 
as in the refusal of information and the absence of discussion lie 
perhaps their only means of safety. 

The Honourable and Learned Gentleman [Sir Roundell Palmer] 
spoke of the language of Mr. Adams as only slightly passing the 
bounds of moderation. Perhaps he might admit that Mr. Adams’ 
own language warranted that description; but Mr. Adams was the 
representative of a foreign Government, and that Government had 
used language to which the designation . . . was scarcely appli¬ 
cable. What of Mr. Seward’s despatch of the nth of July? . . . 
Mr. Seward’s language was as follows: 

“ Can it be an occasion for either surprise or complaint that, if this 
condition of things is to remain and receive the deliberate sanction 


191 1.] THE SEIZURE OP THE LAIRD RAMS. 321 

of the British Government, the navy of the United States will re¬ 
ceive instructions to pursue these enemies into the ports which 
thus, in violation of the law of nations and the obligations of neu¬ 
trality, become harbors for the pirates. The President very dis¬ 
tinctly perceives the risks and hazards which a naval conflict thus 
maintained will bring to . . . the two countries. But ... if, 
through the necessary employment of all our means of national 
defence, such a partial war shall become a general one between the 
two nations, the President thinks that the responsibility for that 
painful result will not fall upon the United States.” 

That was a distinct threat of war. . . . What he wanted to im¬ 
press on the House was, that throughout these proceedings there 
had been a threat of war on the part of the United States. The 
Government had failed to obtain from courts of law and from Brit¬ 
ish juries that application of the law which it desired, and conse¬ 
quently the only course that was open to it . . . was to procure the 
utmost possible delay. . . . They were threatened by the United 
States; they knew they were unable to obtain a decision in their 
favor in the courts of law; after the threats which had been made 
by the United States they did not dare to come to the House of 
Commons for an alteration of the law. What were they to do? 
The only course open to them was to lengthen out the proceedings 
to the greatest possible extent. . . . But that was not the most 
important part of the speech of the Honorable and Learned Gen¬ 
tleman. We had had a distinct avowal that the Government had 
broken the law. The Honorable and Learned Gentleman had ac¬ 
knowledged that, upon their own responsibility, without any au¬ 
thority from the law, they had ventured to stop vessels which had 
a legal right to leave the country. Now, it seemed to him that it 
would be an evil day in our history when it was recorded that the 
Government, under threats of war from a foreign power, . . . had 
broken through every right which the subject possessed, . . . had 
seized his property in violation of the law, and that then Parliament 
had taken no notice whatever of such an illegality. ... Was there 
any other period of our history at which such an act would have 
been permitted? Was there any other period at which it would have 
been endured that the Government should violate the rights of the 
subject in deference to a foreign power, and yet that Parliament 
should take no notice of the matter? . . . 

They had been accused of being the “most docile” House of Com¬ 
mons that ever existed, of “sneaking to their places,” of allowing 
ministers to do what they pleased. They should really merit that 
charge ... if they quietly received the threats of a foreign power, 

41 


322 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

if they permitted ministers to use all the delay and procrastination 
of the law for the purpose of crushing the subject, if they allowed 
Her Majesty’s Government to break the law, and if they suffered 
them at the same time to avow that they did it on behalf of those 
who had addressed to them threats of war. 

Every one of these charges made by the opposition against 
Lord Palmerston’s administration was not only true, but was 
admitted to be true, and had they stood alone, they would have 
ruined any body of public men who had held office in England 
since the accession of William III. But they did not stand alone; 
the great question loomed behind, whether the opposition dared 
to take office on the issue of liberating the jams. That ques¬ 
tion was put by Mr. Forster, and it was answered in the negative. 

Any honourable gentleman who was in the habit of watching 
the news which came from America would be aware that for 
months previous to the detention of these rams a fear was ex¬ 
pressed in the North, and a hope in the South, that they would 
issue forth; and that being so, and the Government having reason 
to believe that the rams were intended for the Confederate Gov¬ 
ernment, they took upon themselves the responsibility of detain¬ 
ing them. . . . Well, then, if the noble Lord or Honourable gentle¬ 
men opposite thought that the Government deserved a vote of 
censure for so doing, let them boldly propose such a vote, and 
say that they would not have done the same thing. . . . The 
noble Lord seemed to think lightly of a war with America; but 
that was not the feeling of the country, nor did he believe it 
could be the feeling of the opposition generally. 

The certainty of war should the rams be allowed to sail — 
that was all the defence Earl Russell had to allege in answer to 
some of the gravest accusations which had been made against 
any minister of the Crown since the Revolution of 1688. In 
1861 a series of questions had arisen touching to the quick the 
national honor and the national good faith. After mature 
reflection the Palmerston Cabinet, speaking through their 
official organ, Sir Roundell Palmer, then Solicitor-General, 
had, on March 27, 1863, expounded their view of the law to 
Parliament in these words: “The United States Government 
have no right to complain of the Act in question; the Foreign 
Enlistment Act is enforced in the way in which the English laws 


1911.] THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 323 

are usually enforced against English subjects.” Afterward 
the Government had tested the law and, according to Sir Roun- 
dell Palmer, the courts had held it to be lawful for English 
subjects to build and send abroad such vessels as the rams, 
provided they disguised their purpose to sell to a belligerent 
under certain transparent subterfuges. Eminent counsel had 
given the Lairds similar advice, acting on which the Lairds had 
built these rams, apparently lawfully, and when they were 
ready to sail the Government had seized them, without color of 
law, and had held them by military force, without a trial, and 
without even specifying grounds of complaint. 

“I suppose,” said Sir Hugh Cairns, “I am not going too 
far in saying that if any but a large and well-established house 
with great resources had been subjected to an occurrence of 
this kind, it must have occasioned its ruin.” And the seizure 
had not been made with the honest purpose of bringing those 
ships to trial, that was implicitly admitted, but with the pur¬ 
pose of forcing the owners into selling their property because 
they could not hold it until their title could be determined 
by a court. “ Surely,” said Sir Hugh, “ in a case of this sort, . . . 
where the property was of the value of nearly a quarter of a 
million of money, . . . surely it was the duty of the Govern¬ 
ment, ... to use promptitude and despatch to bring the case 
to trial. Well, now, will the House believe it, that from the 
9th day of October until the 8th day of February, which is 
exactly four months, not a single step was taken, no information 
was filed in the Exchequer; and I do not think I am going 
too far when I say that if this House had not assembled a very 
few days before that time [February 4], the information would 
not have been filed to this day?” 

Upon such premises it was impossible to refute Sir Hugh’s 
conclusion. “The seizure of these vessels, . . . raises consti¬ 
tutional questions of as great importance — I say so deliber¬ 
ately — as were ever brought before this House. I speak with 
full consciousness of the gravity of the expressions I use, when 
I charge the Government — let there be no mistake — I 
charge the Government with having done, and after hearing 
the Attorney-General to-night, I say having done, on their 
own confession, what was illegal and unconstitutional, without 
law, without justification, and without excuse.” 


324 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

Thomas Baring was the most eminent of the Conservatives 
who voted against their party. Probably there were not half 
a dozen men on that side of the House who exceeded him in 
influence. Born in 1799, he had sat in Parliament since 1835, 
continuously, except between the years 1837 and 1844. He 
had been offered the Chancellorship of the Exchequer in Lord 
Derby’s administrations of 1852 and 1858, and was beside not 
only the head of one of the first banking houses in the world, 
but was one of the most prominent men socially in London. 
He, for all intents and purposes, closed the debate in these 
words: “This I would say in conclusion, that if the speeches 
of my Right Honorable friend and the Honorable and 
learned member for Belfast [Sir Hugh Cairns] are to be 
taken as furnishing the grounds on which we are to divide 
tonight, they seem to me to have arrived, by simply moving 
for these papers, at a most lame and impotent conclusion. Why 
do not they at once move a vote of censure on the Government, 
or on the Law Officers of the Crown for the course which they 
have pursued? For my own part, I offer to the noble Lord, 
the Foreign Secretary, and to those Gentlemen by whom he is 
advised in those matters, although I think they are open to 
grave censure for not having prevented the departure of the 
Alabama , my thanks for their conduct on this occasion.” With 
that speech the motion died. As Mr. Adams said, Thomas 
Baring had demolished Lord Derby’s “castle of cards.” 

I doubt if an issue involving the stability of their class has 
ever been presented more lucidly to an aristocracy within a 
legislative chamber where they controlled, and if, on such an 
issue coming to a vote, an aristocracy ever before so quietly 
and so, apparently, voluntarily abdicated. Sometimes there 
has been an appeal, as, in the case of the Reform Bill, to an 
election, but more frequently to arms. 

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, the British 
aristocracy decided to sever the American Union to strengthen 
themselves. As the conflict deepened, they perceived that to 
sever the Union the blockade of the South by the North must 
be raised. Not daring to raise the blockade with the British 
navy, because of fear of British democracy, the aristocracy 
undertook to build and deliver a navy to the South. They 
built the ships, but, when it came to delivering them, they 



ign-l the seizure of the laird rams. 325 

flinched before the North, even though to effect a delivery 
they had prostituted their judges and degraded their courts. 

Then the minister who flinched turned upon the subject 
who was only exercising his rights, as those rights had been de¬ 
fined by the judges to whom the aristocracy had appealed, 
and took from him his property by military force. The aris¬ 
tocracy had to determine whether they would remove that 
minister who had betrayed them, and substitute another to 
carry out their policy to the end, or whether they would capitu¬ 
late. They voted by a majority of twenty-five to capitulate, 
and the majority was not partisan. 

I take my father to have been the profoundest observer of 
British society of any foreigner of his time, and from the 4th 
of February, when he had heard Lord Derby question Lord 
Russell on the opening night of the session, he had anticipated 
some such result. Lord Derby, in his opinion, did not rise to 
the level of the emergency. He was not eager to fight the 
issue to the end. On February 25 Mr. Adams wrote to tell 
• Mr. Seward, that the opposition had gathered courage enough 
to worry the Government on its foreign policy, but that it was 
not ready to take office and reverse it. “ It does not appear that 
they are prepared with any different measures. The struggle 
looks more like a trial of strength in view of future operations. 
On this issue the division is not strictly a party one. The 
majority is greater than the strength of the ministry could 
command.” 1 

And yet the balance hung so even that it seemed that a hair 
might incline it to either side. The danger was weakness; 
that war might result from the impotence of the power which 
temporarily held it in check. Six weeks later Mr. Adams 
wrote again: I “earnestly hope that our efforts” in the field 
“may be crowned with success, otherwise it is much to be appre¬ 
hended that the causes of offence may be accumulated to such 
an extent on this side as to render escape from a conflict 
almost impossible. Nothing will keep down the malevolent 
spirit that pervades the higher classes, but the conviction that 
there is no hope left of effecting a permanent disruption of the 
United States.” 2 

1 Adams to Seward , February 25, 1864. 

2 Adams to Seward , April 4, 1864. 


326 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

Probably he was right in this forecast, as he usually was 
right in his forecasts when in England. Lord Palmerston’s 
Government could not have held the rams much longer without 
trial, and to try them would have involved much risk. Min¬ 
isters were, even when Mr. Adams wrote, casting about for 
some means of controlling Pollock, but the chances were not 
promising that such an Attorney-General as Sir Roundell would 
succeed in coercing the Chief Baron, especially when sitting 
with a Liverpool jury. With a verdict against the Crown, 
the danger would have been acute. The knot was cut, as 
Mr. Adams thought that it must ultimately be cut, by the 
collapse of the South. The blockade had done its work. The 
Confederacy was already financially exhausted, and when 
Grant and Sherman were beginning their last advance nothing 
could be spared from home defence for the purpose of sustaining 
what had become speculative investments abroad. As early 
as February 14, 1864, the Lairds showed signs of distress. 
Through Bravay they intimated a willingness to sell for £300,000. 
This was an attempt to extort money from the Ministry, before 
the debate. After the debate the price of the rams rapidly 
fell, and on May 26, 1864, they were finally bought by the 
Admiralty for £195,000 down and £25,000 more contingent 
upon their satisfactory completion. 

Looked at from the standpoint of American history, purely, 
the debate in the House of Commons, on February 23, 1864, and 
the division which closed the debate, are memorable, but they 
have beside a larger significance. After Waterloo England 
became the heart of modern civilization, the centre of the 
world’s economic system, and as such she wielded, until Feb¬ 
ruary, 1864, a supremacy which was, in substance, unques¬ 
tioned. On that night she abdicated, and her supremacy 
has never returned. That act, which indicated a change in the 
economic and military equilibrium of mankind at large, indi¬ 
cated a still profounder change in the social status at home. 
The action of the House marked the rise of new social forces, 
the advent of a new ruling class. The next step was broader 
enfranchisement, and the formation of a radical Cabinet with 
Mr. Gladstone at its head. The type of English aristocrat 
represented by Lord Palmerston had been discarded. 

Whatever may have been the failings of this elder type of 


ign-l the seizure of the laird rams. 327 

man it had never been backward in fight, and if England had 
won supremacy she had paid for it with her blood. The proof 
that the species was decaying is that the United States succeeded 
in swaying England by an apparent readiness for war, when 
she had, in fact, little or no physical force at command. Nor 
did this failure of English martial energy manifest itself in 
relation to America alone. 

As on the western continent a consolidated democratic re¬ 
public appeared to be rising on the ruin of a slave-holding 
oligarchy, so in central Europe the fragments of Germany 
showed signs of cohering in what promised to be a threatening 
military empire. In February, 1864, the Prussians and Aus¬ 
trians began to dismember Denmark by occupying Schleswig. 
In the dismemberment of Denmark, England had a substantial 
interest, for the absorption of the duchies would give to Prussia 
not only a deep-water harbor on the Baltic but the possession 
of a canal route to the North Sea. This would make it possible 
for Prussia to become a considerable maritime power; and yet 
Great Britain’s stake in the centralization of Germany was 
trivial compared to her stake in the American Civil War. 

From the outset all Englishmen intuitively perceived that 
the social equilibrium of English society must be determined 
by the victory of freedom or of slavery in the West. Power in 
England hinged on the restriction or the extension of the suffrage. 
Hitherto, speaking broadly, the landed gentry had predom¬ 
inated, but, if the franchise were to be extended widely, none 
could tell whither power might migrate. Certainly it would not 
remain with those who then enjoyed it. Therefore the aristoc¬ 
racy and the proletariat took sides passionately, the aristocracy 
assuming that if the South should prevail the enfranchisement of 
the proletariat might be indefinitely postponed, the proletariat 
accepting it as an axiom that their fortunes were bound up with 
the fortunes of the North. On February 23, 1864, the aris¬ 
tocracy accepted defeat and formally recorded their surrender. 
And so rapid had been the progress of their decay that they 
surrendered to an ultimatum which two years before would 
certainly have provoked only defiance. They surrendered be¬ 
cause their ally, the South, had collapsed. During the American 
conflict the vitality of the English aristocracy had run to its 
lees, so that when the Danish difficulty began other social 


328 


MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 


[Dec. 


forces predominated; but of this profound movement Lord 
Palmerston and Lord Russell were only very imperfectly con¬ 
scious. Mr. Gladstone, on the contrary, had received a power¬ 
ful stimulant from his experiment at Newcastle. As Lord 
Palmerston remained reactionary, favoring war and opposing 
the extension of the suffrage, so, conversely, Mr. Gladstone, 
as soon as an opportunity offered after the surrender of Feb¬ 
ruary 23, 1864, plunged into the gulf on whose brink he had 
been shivering. On May n, 186/, he unexpectedly propounded 
the dogma, in the House of Commons, that every male British 
subject, of full age, and under no “ personal unfitness, had a 
moral right” to vote. Gladstone pretended to be surprised at 
the sensation which followed, and ascribed it to a change in 
his “hearers and in the public mind”; but Lord Morley has 
likened his words to a “thunderbolt.” At all events they agi¬ 
tated the gentry; and Lord Palmerston, who incarnated the 
spirit of the gentry, wrote to Gladstone that he had offended 
“all persons who value the maintenance of our institutions.” 

This speech on the suffrage marked the dividing line between 
Gladstone the conservative and high churchman, who had rep¬ 
resented the University of Oxford, and Gladstone the radical 
and latitudinarian, who disestablished the Irish Church, 
advocated “home rule” and who sat for Midlothian. In the 
first encounter after his conversion, Mr. Gladstone completely 
routed Lord Palmerston. Almost while Mr. Gladstone was de¬ 
claring himself a radical in the House, Lord Palmerston, without 
consulting his colleagues, told Count Apponyi, the Austrian 
minister, that, should Austria send a fleet to the Baltic, he would 
order a stronger one thither from England, or resign his office. 
Very possibly Lord Palmerston may have meant what he said 
when he threatened to resign, but he loved office too well to 
make his threat good, when put to the test. When Lord Palmer¬ 
ston presented his proposition to his cabinet, he found Mr. 
Gladstone in full control. Mr. Gladstone, as a radical, would 
listen to no suggestion of war, nor, as he said himself, would he 
“recognize in any way the title of the Prime Minister to bind 
us” to a policy. Lord Morley has described what occurred at 
the meeting. 

Palmerston and Russell were for war, even though it would be 
war single-handed. . . . They bemoaned to one another the ti- 


I 9 II -1 


THE SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


3 2 9 


midity of their colleagues, and half-mournfully contrasted the con¬ 
venient ciphers that filled the Cabinets of Pitt and Peel, with the 
number of able men with independent opinions in their own admin¬ 
istration. The Prime Minister, as I have heard from one who was 
present, held his head down while the talk proceeded, and then at 
last looking up said in a neutral voice, “I think the Cabinet is 
against war.” 1 

Lord Palmerston saw clearly where all this tended. One day 
he said to Lord Shaftesbury, “Gladstone will soon have it all 
his own way; and, whenever he gets my place, we shall have 
strange doings.” And so Lord Palmerston tried to make his 
seat for the University of Oxford secure, because “he is a 
dangerous man; keep him in Oxford and he is partially muzzled; 
but send him elsewhere, and he will run wild.” 2 

On June 27, i86/f, Lord Russell admitted in the House of 
Lords that his negotiations had broken down and that Denmark 
must be abandoned. This avowal was followed by an explosion 
of shame and indignation at the pusillanimous conduct of 
England who, having encouraged Denmark to resist, deserted 
her at the approach of danger. Motions of censure were made 
in both Houses. That in the Lords was carried by nine votes. 
In the Commons the debate fell on July 5, and Mr. Adams, 
who attended the debate, has noted in his diary that Mr. Cobden 
told him how Lord Palmerston had favored sending the fleet 
to the last, and had only given way when assured by Mr. Brand, 
the whipper in, that, on sounding the party, he had found so 
many members to be convinced that their constituents would 
not support war, that Palmerston would be badly beaten on a 
division if he persevered. Although not a voice was raised in 
defence of Earl Russell, this retreat saved the Ministry for 
another year, but only because Lord Derby and the Tories were 
too feeble and too timid to assume responsibility. Therefore 
Lord Russell continued at the Foreign Office, and he so em¬ 
broiled Great Britain with the United States, on the issue of the 
settlement of the Alabama Claims , that he nearly succeeded in 
making arbitration impossible. 

The inevitable result followed. On July 6, 1865, Parliament 
was dissolved, and Mr. Gladstone, who had represented the 

1 Morley, Life of Gladstone , n. 117, 118. 

2 Hodder, Life and Work of the Earl of Shaftesbury , in. 187, 188. 


330 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

University of Oxford for eighteen years, was defeated. He 
found another seat in Lancashire, near his new friends, Bright! 
and Forster. As he told his future constituents, he came among 
them “unmuzzled”; and perhaps for that reason he was so 
suspected even there that he stood third on the poll, with two 
Tories above him. The country returned a House of Commons 
with a majority of eighty, nominally pledged to support Lord 
Palmerston, but Lord Palmerston died in October, and even 
had he lived, he could not have stayed the democratic tide 
which surged onward after Appomattox. Obeying that mysteri¬ 
ous impulsion which often, in moments of emergency, guides a 
cabinet more truly than it guides a popular assembly, Lord 
Russell and Mr. Gladstone brought in a moderate Reform Bill, 
but they were opposed and finally beaten by the gentry, among 
their party, of the stripe of Lord Palmerston. Plainly, the exist¬ 
ing constituencies no longer reflected the energy of the nation. 
Mr. Robert Lowe, who had held office under Lord Palmerston, 
led the Whig opposition to reform, and between him and Mr. 
Gladstone the contest waxed hot. One day Lowe asked a 
question putting the issue with a bluntness which, though 
successful in the House, roused resentment among the dis¬ 
franchised. “If,” said he, “you wanted venality, ignorance, 
drunkenness — if you wanted impulsive, unreflecting, violent 
people — where do you look for them? Do you go to the top 
or to the bottom?” Gladstone retorted that there were those 
who, when they computed an addition to the electorate, regarded 
it as they might an invading army, but these prospective voters 
“are our own fellow subjects, . . . our own flesh and blood,” 
men “ who have been lauded to the skies for their good conduct.” 
So Gladstone became the popular hero, overtopping even Bright. 
A few weeks after, during the Reform riots, the mob flocked to 
his house, shouting for Gladstone and liberty, and the police 
had to beg Mrs. Gladstone, who happened to be alone, to show 
herself on the balcony in order to induce the multitude to dis¬ 
perse. At last Mr. Gladstone had fairly hit his mark, and yet 
Mr. Gladstone with all his popularity could not move an unin¬ 
timidated Palmerstonian House of Commons. Mr. Robert Lowe, 
who should have followed him, beat him at every point. Ac¬ 
cording to Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Lowe “supplied the whole brains 
of the opposition,” and “had such a command of the House as 


ign-l the seizure of the laird rams. 331 

had never in my recollection been surpassed.” Finally, on 
June 26, Lord Russell’s Ministry resigned, Lord Derby and the 
Tories succeeded, and Mr. Lowe, as Lord Morley has said, 
“believed for the moment that he had really slain the horrid 
Demogorgon.” 1 His exultation was short-lived. When it 
appeared that Parliament was opposed to enfranchisement, 
agitation began. On July 22, 1866, the radicals called a meeting 
in Hyde Park. The Government forbade the meeting, and sent 
what police they could muster to hold the gates. A vast multi¬ 
tude assembled, threw down the railings, and swept the police 
aside. No attempt was made to clear the Park, nor, probably, 
could the Park have been cleared by any military force the 
Government had at hand. Mr. Adams walked to the Park next 
day, and was deeply impressed. The grass was brown as if by 
fire, “and the crowd looking on and enjoying the spectacle 
were certainly not of the class which ordinarily frequents the 
region. It was the first growl of reform. The rising for a mo¬ 
ment to the surface of that fearful beast which ordinarily lies 
hidden far down at the bottom. The remarkable part of the 
spectacle was the order and quiet generally preserved.” One 
growl was enough. Liberals and Conservatives combined to 
give all that was asked and more, and then, while Mr. Disraeli 
nominally led the House, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright from 
the opposition benches dictated to him how he should frame 
his statute. The aristocracy were thoroughly cowed. Lord 
Morley has told the story of that session: 

The process effecting this wide extension of political power to 
immense classes hitherto without it, was in every way extraordi¬ 
nary. The great reform was carried by a Parliament elected to 
support Lord Palmerston, and Lord Palmerston detested reform. 
It was carried by a Government in a decided minority. It was 
carried by a minister [Disraeli] and by a leader of opposition 
[Gladstone], neither of whom was at the time in the full confidence 
of his party. Finally it was carried by a House of Commons that 
the year before had, in effect, rejected a measure for the admission 
of only 400,000 new voters, while the measure to which it now as¬ 
sented added almost a million voters to the electorate. 2 

So far as it goes, Lord Morley’s account of this Parliament is 
admirable and yet he has omitted what is, to Americans, the 
1 Morley, Life of Gladstone , n. 205. 2 lb, n. 226. 


332 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. [Dec. 

most interesting phenomenon of all. He has not pointed out, 
what nevertheless is true, that the proletariat won enfranchise¬ 
ment when their pressure combined with the pressure of the 
United States prevented the censure of Lord Russell, by the 
House of Commons, for the seizure of the Laird Rams. 
These are the facts, as I understand them, which, when arranged 
in due relation to each other, elucidate the scope of the work 
that Mr. Adams did during the first period of his public 
service abroad. I have now only to sum up concisely the con¬ 
clusions which I conceive follow from these premises. 

For just one hundred years prior to the election of Abraham 
Lincoln to the presidency, the aristocratic principle in England 
had been striving to subdue the democratic principle in America, 
and to that end had fought two wars from which democracy 
had escaped, as it were, by a miracle. In large part democracy 
in America had been saved by means of a union with a slave¬ 
holding oligarchy, a union which would have been impossible 
under pressure less severe. Suddenly the bond, designed to 
fuse these discordant elements in a single organism, burst 
asunder and, in 1861, the North found herself hemmed in be¬ 
tween the slave-holding and the British aristocracies, which 
were natural allies. To conquer the South, were the South 
unaided by England, strained the North to the limit of endur¬ 
ance. She gradually massed eight hundred thousand fighting 
men on the Southern fields of battle, but when she had done this 
she left herself without fleet or army to resist a foreign foe. 
Therefore she had to confide the defence of her Atlantic coast, 
facing England, to her diplomats, for other defenders she had 
none. The problem presented to these men was intellectual and 
not dynamical. It was the restraint of England by an idea, 
for if Great Britain should once join the South, nothing could 
save the North from overthrow. 

Desperate as the situation seemed at first to the two states¬ 
men, who were in charge in Washington and London, they 
presently perceived one path to safety. They might be able to 
bring the disfranchised and discontented classes of Great 
Britain to support the North in such wise as to paralyze Lord 
Palmerston’s Government, provided their adversary could 
find no such occasion against them as would incense the whole 
British people. Indeed the English aristocracy somewhat 


SEIZURE OF THE LAIRD RAMS. 


333 


I9HJ 

resembled an angry snake, relatively harmless until coiled, 
but deadly if permitted to gather itself. With infinite patience, 
skill and courage, Mr. Seward and Mr. Adams addressed them¬ 
selves to their task, changing their tactics to meet the varying 
stratagems of their adversary as he saw his feints successively 
foiled, but always pressing him as strongly as they dared. 
Thus they passed from the passive flexibility by which they eluded 
the peril of the Trent , to the stern but measured onset by which 
they forced the seizure of the rams. Finally the aristocracy, 
unable to consolidate its forces, capitulated. The vote of the 
Commons on February 23, 1864, marks an epoch in civilization. 

As in my age I meditate upon the scenes I saw in my youth, 
as I ponder upon the disparity between the bleeding North and 
the exultant England of my boyhood, as I recall the ferocity 
of the passions which once seethed about me and consider the 
magnitude of the interests which were then at stake, and as, 
in the midst of these memories, I pause to reflect that during 
those harassing years a single moment of weakness, a single 
error of judgment, must have precipitated the fatal catastrophe, 
I realize at last that I shall search the records of modern diplo¬ 
macy in vain for such another masterpiece. 






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